Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich said on Friday that the National Fraud Unit would continue doing its work “without looking left or right,” despite the “bashing it receives from all sides.”
Alsheich’s words reinforced media reports that he had told a closed forum earlier in the week that senior elements in the country were attempting to interfere with investigations conducted by the unit.
The fraud unit is “capable of making governments and bringing them down,” Alsheich said at a street-naming ceremony in Modi’in. “There is no place more sensitive than the unit.”
“Continuing straight, without looking left or right, is not an easy mission,” Alsheich said. “You need a straight back, because you’re going to get bashed from all sides.”
“There’s no way you’re not going to step on exposed nerves. No way you’re not going to step on somebody’s corns. You are exposed in the turret and you are going to get hit by the criticism of everybody who is made uncomfortable by your work.”
The commissioner added that “it’s probably no coincidence that the fraud unit was established in 1975 and in 1977 the government fell,” referring to the election that brought Menachem Begin to power after 30 years of Labor Party rule.
Alsheich did not refer directly to the TOT report about incriminating material collected about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and intensive discussions on the issue conducted by the attorney general.
Nor did he refer to the Channel 2 report that new information about Netanyahu was being assessed by the police, under the direction of the fraud unit.
According to reports earlier this week, Alsheich had told a closed form that a group of powerful and rich people had been attempting to intimidate Maj. Gen Roni Litman, head of the Lahav 433 unit, and other senior officers over the past few months.
He is also reported to have said that those trying to intimidate Litman were financing legal assistance for police officers who had left the force under a cloud and were now bad-mouthing the force to the Justice Ministry’s police investigation department.
The street in Modi’in was named after former Deputy Commissioner Ephraim Bracha, who headed the fraud unity before committing suicide last year,
