"Acute conflict of interest":
The chairman of the Eretz HaKodesh movement, Rabbi Pesach Lerner, addressed the Ombudsman this morning (Friday) and demanded an immediate freeze on the transfer of funds to the project to establish a Jewish renewal directorate of the Ministry of the Diaspora and an internal organization, which was approved in the amount of 60 million shekels from coalition funds of the Labor Party.
This is after it was discovered that MK Gilad Karib served concurrently with his term in the Knesset as a member of the management board of the association and there is a fear of a conflict of interest.
At the beginning of his address, Rabbi Lerner said that he was surprised to learn that the Holy Land movement, which operates projects to strengthen Jewish identity in the Diaspora and the connection to the State of Israel, was not given the opportunity to participate in the project.
The same goes for other bodies working on the issue.
Following this, an in-depth investigation was conducted which revealed that the procedure for establishing the directorate was conducted in an improper manner, which raises the suspicion of a lack of cleanliness.
At the same time, the journalist Kalman Libeskind published an investigation in the Ma'ariv newspaper about MK Kariv's involvement in the project and serious flaws in the approval of the project. The establishment of the directorate and the budgeting of the project are the realization of a clause in the coalition agreement, which was signed when the Labor faction entered the government. MK Gilad Kariv who previously served as the chairman of the reform movement in Israel promoted the introduction of the clause to the agreements and took an active part in its promotion and approval in the state budget for 2022. However, from the publications it appears that in the end the money went to an internal association in which Kriv served until a short time ago as a member of the executive committee, at the same time as his tenure in the Knesset and his activities to approve the budget.
The vote on last year's budget, archive, photo: Noam Moshkowitz Speakers of the Knesset
As mentioned, Kriev's ties with the association did not prevent him from dealing with the budget, nor did they prevent the chairman of the association from publicly admitting this with the approval of the project in a tweet under the description "Thanks to those without whom the project would not have happened".
Besides the conflict of interests of Kriev, Lerner points out that the contract with the association was conducted improperly and in violation of the regulations, while the members of the association participated in meetings with the members of the office and were partners in the professional procedure even before the decision was made to hold the joint venture.
"The hand of an internal association is deeply immersed in the work of the headquarters, which ended up allocating tens of millions to itself," Lerner writes.
In addition to this, the association was selected in a procedure of exemption from tendering and publication of tests, while its annual budget in previous years amounts to only about 1% of the scope of the entire project, and it even undertakes to raise tens of millions of shekels from independent sources.
Strangely, the association was not required to provide any proof of its ability to manage and raise funds on such a scale.
Lerner points out additional legal difficulties involved in the existence of such a project through the Diaspora Ministry, whose formal field of activity is the Diaspora, while the directorate's budget is intended for activities, some of which will certainly take place within the borders of the State of Israel.
Apart from that, according to the legal regulations it is possible to have a joint venture with the body that carries out the activity itself and not through associations that serve as a "conduit" for transferring the funding to other associations.
The chairman of the Eretz HaKodesh movement signs his letter that in light of the above, there is serious concern that this is the transfer of political funds, and for that reason the transfer of the budget must be stopped until the considerations are re-examined without any improper political and personal pressures and at the same time, the involvement of the MK Karib in transferring the budgets.
"The contract with an internal association in the amount of 60 million shekels is tainted throughout with sharp conflicts of interest and a lack of cleanliness of hands that raise a real fear of offenses in the field of moral purity," Rabbi Lerner wrote, adding: "We are turning to you in order to immediately order the freezing of the contract and its opening of a comprehensive examination on the subject".
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