January 23, 2003

Prosecutor admits leaking loan
probe to hurt PM

By Dan Izenberg

Leora Glatt-Berkowitz, a prosecutor in the Central District Attorney's Office, was the source of the leak to Ha'aretz regarding Israel's request that South African authorities question Cyril Kern about his $1.5 million loan to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein announced Wednesday.

In a raucous press conference that pitted Rubinstein against angry journalists, the A-G said Glatt-Berkowitz admitted to investigators that she had leaked the news to reporter Baruch Kra for "ideological reasons."

Israel Television quoted Glatt-Berkowitz as telling investigators she had leaked the document because her son was going into the army and she did not want Sharon to be prime minister while he was serving.

Glatt-Berkowitz was released early Wednesday morning after being questioned late into the night. She was suspended from her job and ordered to stay away from the offices where she worked. In an interview Wednesday morning, Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit predicted Glatt-Berkowitz would stand trial on criminal charges.

The journalists were angry with Rubinstein for allowing Kra to be questioned under warning by the special team appointed by him to investigate the leak.

Sources in the Justice Ministry said the investigation of Glatt-Berkowitz is not over yet, but that the veteran state prosecutor could be tried on charges of obstructing justice and disclosure in breach of duty.

According to Article 117 of the Penal Code, "If a public servant delivers without lawful authority information he obtained by virtue of his office to a person not competent to receive it... he is liable to three years imprisonment."

Glatt-Berkowitz was assigned by the State Attorney's Office to serve as the Justice Ministry's referent to the police investigation into allegations of wrongdoing in Sharon's campaign for the leadership of the Likud in 1999.

A report by State Comptroller Eliezer Goldberg revealed that Sharon had received NIS 5.9 million from a fictitious company in the US called Annex Research. In doing so, Sharon allegedly violated the Political Party Law that limits campaign contributions to individual candidates in internal elections.

Had the attorney-general and the state attorney decided to indict Sharon, Glatt-Berkowitz would have been the prosecutor. During the press conference, Rubinstein insisted that the controversial investigation of Kra was of minor importance compared to the "central" fact that the investigation team had located the source of the leak.

"The investigation justified itself, to my regret, because it revealed that this attorney leaked [the document] for ideological reasons that she described in great detail," said Rubinstein. "The concern that I raised at the beginning of the investigation regarding intervention in the sensitive political system proved to be true.

"What would any decent person what would any one of you have felt if this happened to him. Think about it. We weren't that far away from not investigating the leak. I was really hesitant about ordering it that day. [Had I not], the attorney would have continued to be the Justice Ministry's referent to the investigation, and were it to turn into an indictment, she would have been the prosecutor in the case. And this after leaking the document because of her ideological point of view."

Rubinstein repeated the possibility that Glatt-Berkowitz would have continued to have a role in the investigation and possible prosecution of Sharon over and over again. He said this possibility made her actions "a serious crime."

Furthermore, the leak itself had caused serious damage to the investigation into Sharon's activities, Rubinstein said, adding: "We are talking here about an inquiry [the request to the South African government to question Cyril Kern]. "An inquiry is a procedure in which the person who is to be questioned knows nothing about and so cannot prepare himself in advance. There has never before been a leak regarding an inquiry [i.e. a request to question foreign nationals abroad].

This has made the investigation much more difficult. We will go on with the investigation and do what we can. But this has made it more difficult."

Rubinstein said the State Attorney's Office had explained all of this to Kra before he published his report in Ha'aretz on January 7.

After the press conference on Wednesday, Kra told reporters he had not been warned by Justice Ministry officials prior to writing the story that he should not write it.

Rubinstein said the investigation team had no choice but to question Kra. "Everyone knows that when you investigate a case, you must take testimony from everyone who is relevant to it," he said.

Furthermore, Kra had been warned in advance that "any disclosure like this will undermine the investigation," Rubinstein said. The reporters were particularly incensed that Kra had been questioned under warning.

"Imagine that he hadn't been warned," Rubinstein said. "Let us say he would have answered the questions and incriminated himself. Then everyone would have attacked us from the opposite direction. 'Why didn't you warn him [in advance],' they would have demanded.

He was asked questions and said what he said. The investigating team asked my permission to question him under warning and received it. This is a procedure which must be carried out."

Ha'aretz reporter Moshe Gorali said Rubinstein had lowered the threshold for investigative reporters who publish leaks. Until now, he said, reporters had only been investigated for publishing leaks if they involved serious crimes or national security. He said the investigation into the allegations against Sharon was neither.

Rubinstein angrily rejected Gorali's charges and the attacks against him by academics and legal commentators, including Moshe Negbi and Hebrew University Prof. Yaron Ezrahi, who called on the attorney-general to resign.

"Nobody intends to strike at freedom of the press," Rubinstein said. "We live in the world of the media, and I heard all the things that were said [against me] today. But we have a different responsibility. Our responsibility is to the law, and if the law is violated, we must investigate." "No one [meaning Kra] is above the law," he added. Rubinstein blasted the rhetoric of the critics.

"No one is trying to terrify the press [by investigating Kra]," he said. "These are phrases that are good for headlines, which you like so much. 'Terrify,' 'rage.' There is no terror and there is no rage. Simply professional work which is carried out with calm deliberation. No one is out to get the media."

In an extraordinary move, the Justice Ministry faxed reporters at 2:40 a.m. on Wednesday to inform them that the investigation committee had found the source of the leak, although it did not divulge her name. Rubinstein said this had been done to forestall rumors that might have spread overnight.

Meanwhile, the association of Jerusalem police reporters sent a letter to Rubinstein protesting the investigation of Kra.

"In democratic societies, the job of investigators is to investigate and the job of reporters is to report," the letter said. "In other regimes, the government terrorizes journalists so that they will not report on subjects it does not like. We hope that our country will not deteriorate to that level."

Ha'aretz deputy editor Yoel Esteron said Rubinstein's decision to investigate Kra "has stained his term in office and casts a heavy shadow over the staff of the State Attorney's Office."

Esteron charged that Rubinstein is unworthy of his office and that he is leading the country to "unacceptable norms that are or were the rule in totalitarian regimes."

Glatt-Berkowitz has worked in the State Attorney's Office's Department of the Justice Ministry for almost 30 years. She was a senior prosecutor in the Tel Aviv District Attorney's Office for many years, and switched to the Central District a few years ago, after clashing with then-Tel Aviv district attorney Miriam Rosenthal.

Over the years, she has represented the state in many important criminal cases, including the charges of corruption in the Histadrut, the trial of Erez Tiboni, who burned his two children to death, and Vladimir Yakirevitz, the former head of the cardiac surgery department at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, who was charged with negligence and accepting bribes.

Israel Radio's Tel Aviv justice reporter described Glatt-Berkowitz as "outspoken, sharp, and articulate. She is opinionated and not a yes-woman."

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