The Cabinet decided yesterday to assume direct responsibility for implementing the recommendations contained in State Comptroller Yitzhak Nebenzahl’s recent report for rooting out corruption, incompetence and fraud alleged to exist in most branches of the government and the armed forces. Civil servants who are slow to carry out the Comptroller’s recommendations may face disciplinary action, the Cabinet warned.
The Cabinet session was devoted largely to a discussion of the Nebenzahl report’s disclosures and the Comptroller’s assertion that if more attention had been paid to his previous reports, some of the recently exposed cases of corruption might have been avoided. The Cabinet instructed Finance Minister Yehoshua Rabinowitz to report to it quarterly on the progress made in implementing the Comptroller’s recommendations. Hitherto, the Finance Ministry alone was responsible for following up the State Comptroller’s proposals.
An effort by Likud to force through a motion of no confidence arising out of the State Comptroller’s report was defeated in the Knesset today by a vote of 47-35. Yoram Eridor, for Likud, said that the present government was part of the “system” which the State Comptroller had found to be at fault–and it should therefore resign and call new elections. Rabinowitz, for the government, termed the Likud motion “deliberately troublesome.” He stressed that the government intended introducing tighter follow-up procedures regarding the State Comptroller’s reports and recommendations.
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.
