The six-month investigation of alleged malfeasance on the part of Interior Minister Arye Deri seems to have produced little more than frayed nerves and a widening rift between the national police and their political bosses.
The 31-year-old Deri, the youngest member of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s Cabinet and a rising star of the Orthodox Shas party, threatened to resign because he is “sick and tire” of the ongoing police inquiry, which has so far produced neither formal charges nor exoneration.
He was persuaded by Shamir to stay in the government. According to some reports, the prime minister assured him the inquiry was drawing to a close, but there was no information from the police to bear that out.
Deri is alleged to have illicitly funneled his ministry’s funds to Shas-affiliated institutions. He has also been accused of personal improprieties in connection with the purchase of apartments in Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, the police are furious over Police Minister Ronni Milo’s threat to take action against unnamed high-ranking officers for allegedly leaking details of their inquiry.
Milo was reportedly angered because press photographers were at police headquarters when a former senior Shas official, Yehezkel Sehayek, was due to report for questioning.
Sehayek is a personal aid to Rabbi Eliezer Schach of Bnei Brak, Shas’ spiritual mentor. Milo demanded to know where the media received advance information that he would be present.
Sources close to Police Commissioner Ya’acov Terner said the leak came from Shas, not the police. They intimated that Milo was exerting unfair pressure on the commissioner and on other top officers for political reasons.
Sources close to Deri have countered with charges that the commissioner is deliberately dragging out the investigation to prolong his tenure in office.
They said that with 50 detectives working on the Deri case, the inquiry would have ended long ago were it not Terner’s “insurance policy.”
The sources claimed Terner knows that Milo and Shamir would like him to resign. They cannot however, force the issue while the Deri case is still ongoing because it would look like political intervention.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
