Comptroller to decide if cabinet can fire accountant general

State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss said Thursday he was considering whether to allow the cabinet to fire Accountant General Yarom Zelekha or grant him permanent protection from dismissal.

Zelekha uncovered the Bank Leumi affair in which Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is being investigated, and is considered a steadfast fighter against corruption. But some senior officials have criticized him for being overly combative and slowing work at the Finance Ministry.

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has asked the comptroller to revoke an interim order preventing the cabinet from dismissing Zelekha. Lindenstrauss said he would consider the request and make a decision by mid-November.

Mazuz cited as the reason for his request the adamant positions of Finance Ministry Director General Yarom Ariav and other senior treasury officials, who last week held a press conference calling for Zelekha's immediate dismissal.

Ariav said at the press conference that Zelekha's conduct was "severely harming the ministry's work and consequently Israel's economy." Ariav's remarks were a direct response to the order that Lindenstrauss had issued the previous day, preventing the cabinet from appointing a replacement for Zelekha.

Lindenstrauss issued the order protecting Zelekha from dismissal because of his role in "exposing corruption."

In Mazuz's letter, he quoted Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer as saying that Zelekha's continued employment as accountant general was endangering Israel's economy. Mazuz added that the problematic professional relationship between Zelekha and other senior treasury officials had been building up for a long time.

"It appears to me that there is no escaping the conclusion that the interest in protecting a worker who [exposes corruption] must take second place to the public interest to ensure the proper function of the body he works for," Mazuz wrote to Lindenstrauss.

Mazuz wrote that he himself had prevented a number of attempts to oust Zelekha from office, for fear this would be seen as a reaction to the latter's complaints against corruption.

However, he noted, the complaints are being examined and Zelekha's contract has come to an end.

Zelekha said in a radio interview last week that Mazuz was a "weak man, and that's the reason he was appointed." He said Mazuz's sister, attorney Yemima Mazuz, the treasury's legal adviser, "shut her eyes" to what he called improper procedures during the sale of Bank Leumi.