Zelekha: Most of the civil service is honest and pure - Haaretz

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Thu., October 11, 2007 ,

Israel Time: 02:37 (EST+7)

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Zelekha: Most of the civil service is honest and pure

By Tal Levy

"Yossi Bachar is worried about investigating the truth, and he has every reason. Yemima Mazuz is a weak woman, as is her brother, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz - that's why he was appointed to his position." These are just a few of the harsh comments Accountant General Yaron Zelekha made during an interview with Reshet Bet radio station this morning. The interview with Zelekha follows Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's questioning by police this morning about his alleged assistance to friends during Bank Leumi's privatization.

Zelekha said a gang of criminal suspects and their friends had spread the claim that he believed everyone to be corrupt and was himself waging a battle against the entire world. He called the claim nonsense, a "sick mantra."

"I have never claimed everyone is corrupt, and this is not the case. Most of the civil service is untainted, honest and pure, as is the case in the treasury," he said. On the other hand, he said, "there is a localized problem of people who have established themselves at the top, through methods that are, in my opinion, questionable." The list of these people, Zelekha said, can be found in newspapers, which publish the names of investigation subjects. Zelekha also noted that, to date, no one has sued him for slander, and that "investigation usually shows that I was correct, and only occasionally wrong."

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"Immediately after State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss began preparing his recommendations to the State Attorney's Office, Hirchson and Olmert approached Yemima Mazuz with an offer that was hard to refuse, to be appointed as the Israel Railway's chairman of the board after she had already given evidence to the state comptroller," he says. "I was also offered the position of chairman of a huge government company during this period and under the same circumstances, if I agreed to play ball, but I'm not in the habit of jumping on every stinking bandwagon."

If Herzl could see how the Jewish prime minister behaved with respect to the Jewish bank he would turn in his grave, Zelekha said, referring to Olmert's questioning in the Bank Leumi affair. "Olmert took steps to arrange for Bank Leumi to be sold to his friends," Zelekha said, repeatedly emphasizing his assurance of Olmert's guilt, and that "the potential damage to state coffers, which could have totaled hundreds of millions of dollars, did not materialize" as a result of his intervention. Zelekha added that "as one familiar with the evidence, I know how grave the affair is. I will not allow a repeat of the Greek island affair."

"If I were to direct the Accountant General's department according to the norms of Abraham Hirchson, Shula Zaken and Oved Yehezkel and their good friends, my tenure would have gone on indefinitely, as did that of Civil Service Commissioner Shmuel Hollander, who starred in the state comptroller's catastrophic report. And we are all aware of the Byzantine methods with which he operates the civil service," Zelekha said in response to Hollander's comment last month that "if I belong in the Zelekha's gang of corruption because I influenced a tender, the attorney general apparently influenced the entire State Attorney's Office. So far, all of my complaints have been found to be justified, and I have even given evidence to the police for seven hours."

Asked about his proposal to impose a rotating term for top positions, Zelekha explained why he did not believe he should step down. He noted that a main aspect of his battle against rot does limit tenures of senior personnel, but this is not a case here. This is an attempt to limit me personally.

He reiterated a few of his achievements, including introduction of accepted business norms in the work of government finance, such as implementing a culture of government tenders, addressing the problem of tax breaks in favor of senior officers, failure to pay debts, and others. "The state has saved many billions as a result of the introduction of these norms," he said.

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