Yitzhak Rafael, Israel’s Deputy Minister of Health, resigned from his office today as an aftermath to a scandal in which a high official of the Ministry has been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for allegedly receiving kickbacks from contractors. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol announced the resignation at a meeting of the Cabinet today.
In a letter to Minister of Health Moshe Shapiro, Mr. Rafael stated he was resigning so as to be free to take legal action to refute findings which he called “a miscarriage of justice.”
The Premier told the Cabinet he had received a report from District Court Judge Moshe Gaulan, of Jerusalem, whom he had appointed as a one-man committee to probe into the kickback charges. Yehuda Spiegel, the Ministry’s former deputy director-general, had been convicted and sent to jail on charges he had gotten kickbacks from contractors. In Judge Gaulan’s report, it is charged that Mr. Rafael knew of those kickbacks which, allegedly, were given to an educational institution of which Mr. Rafael was chairman, and to a yeshiva.
In his announcement that he would take legal action, Mr. Rafael said he had asked the Premier to name a three-man inquiry committee to be headed by a justice of the Supreme Court. He stated he knew nothing of the kickback arrangements between Spiegel and the contractors, and would refute all the implications of the charges against him.
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