Sunday, February 23, 2020

Benny Gantz and corruption



Is Benny Gantz corrupt? If he could be, should you vote for him?

Many in Israel damn Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a crook. They won't vote for him in the up-coming March 2, 2020 national election. They know he's going to trial March 17, 2020 for corruption and other, related  crimes. They ask, why should they vote for him when he could go to jail?


These critics have been damning Netanyahu since the first 'he looks like a crook' - style headlines began to appear more than two years ago. Even back then, these critics refused to consider Netanyahu innocent until proven guilty. If accused, their thinking went, he must step down immediately from being PM. They said, to protect democracy, he mustn't receive a democracy's basic human right--the presumption of innocence. Accused, they said, he's guilty. Period.

Should Benny Gantz be held to the same standard? This isn't a hypothetical question. It's real.


You see, once Gantz retired from the military in 2015, his leadership experience focused on developing a company called, Fifth Dimension. 
That company went bankrupt less than three years later, in December, 2018. That's the month, by the way, Gantz also declared he was going to start another endeavor: a new political Party, which he did.

 After failing in business, he decided his next career stop should be Prime Minister of Israel.

In March, 2019, Israel's State Comptroller's Office reported that it had "castigated" Israel's police for (having previously) signed a 50 million dollar contract with Gantz' Fifth Dimension--without entertaining proposals from any other company. This was a violation of existing business acquisition regulations for the police. In addition, the State Comptroller also "castigated" the police for attempting to sign this contract without any effort to request those offers--another State regulations violation (here). In addition to to these two violations, the State Comptroller also found that Fifth Dimension had given to the police false information about its operations (ibid). 

Specifically, Fifth Dimension was reported to have told police it had been formed in 2012, when that was untrue; that it had an already-developed product, when that was untrue; and that the company had five customers, all of whom were security organizations--when that was not true; Fifth Dimension had zero customers (ibid). 


Fifth Dimension advertised itself as creating artificial intelligence solutions for law enforcement agencies (here). While there may be reason to say that its failure as a business had more to do with a failure to raise sufficient capital (here), the State Comptroller's Report suggests that the company's activities may have been illegal nonetheless, as noted above.



Israel's State Comptroller's Office also "faulted" police for having included Gantz in contract talks (ibid). This is an especially damning piece of information because it cuts off any future attempt by Gantz to say he knew nothing about any false presentations during contract talks: he was right there, in real time. 


In a statement issued at that time (March 2019), Gantz said that this report was about police conduct, not his own conduct (ibid). His own conduct, he added, was "unimpeachable" (Ibid). 

Really?

If the above Comptroller's report is correct, Gantz's professing his "unimpeachability" could be wrong. The report puts him at contract talks. How did he deal with those false statements from his Fifth Dimension (above) when sitting in front of police officials? 


Those who seek to invest millions of dollars with you aren't stupid. They want to know if you can deliver, especially if you're new at what you do, as Gantz was. They look at what you've written to them--and if you are the boss--they look to confirm with you what the company had earlier put into writing. 


In March 2019, there was , inexplicably, no investigation initiated into Fifth Dimension. But last week, Israel's Attorney General's office announced that enough evidence had indeed been gathered about  that company's business activities that a criminal investigation was warranted. Inexplicably, that investigation won't begin until after the election (here). 

At the moment, Gantz himself is not a suspect, just as Netanyahu is not a suspect in at least one corruption case. Yet, Netanyahu's 'corruption' could pale compared to Gantz': Netanyahu took cigars and champagne; Gantz received at least 4 million dollars of taxpayer money from the police by lying about Fifth Dimension--and if he himself didn't lie, someone on his staff did.


Every top army officer learns that the proverbial "buck" stops with him. That is,  he's always responsible for the actions of those who serve under him. Will he now be held responsible for lies by underlings?

Gantz is s cheduled to be questioned by the AG's office. This will create difficulties for Gantz because he's already spent a lot of time blasting Netanyahu (before and after indictments were handed down) for being associated with corrupt actions undertaken by people under his leadership. Now, Gantz has his own 'corruption' associations.  

How will Gantz respond? Will he  continue to claim his actions were "unimpeachable"? Or, will he withdraw from the election, as he had repeatedly demanded that Netanyahu do over his accusations of corruption?


If Gantz has the ethical standards he wants us to credit him with, shouldn't he recuse himself from running for office in this election, so he can spend his time dealing with the criminal investigation licking at his heels. After all, that's what he's said about Netanyahu. 
Surely, what's good for Netanyahu is now good for Gantz, isn't it?

What a choice Gantz forces upon Israel's voters: suddenly, he's no longer 'Mr. Clean'. Instead, he's just another Israeli politician, close enough to corruption to be considered tainted goods. 


Gantz can't just wiggle out from under this corruption investigation. He can't claim he 'knew nothing'. He was present during contract talks.


Regarding the corruption that took place under his nose, what did Gantz know, and when did he know it? Regarding his participation in the election, why should he escape from what he's so aggressively demanded of Netanyahu--that is, to step down immediately?


Remember, it's been Gantz who's been demonizing Netanyahu for corruption during this entire 11-month-long-three-election-process. He's done an effective job attacking Netanyahu: judging from online reader comments to political stories from Israel, a certain number of voters believe him when he phrases what he's said about Netanyahu's investigations to make himself look like the better PM choice. 


How does he look now? With this new corruption 'shoe' now on his own foot, how squeaky clean does Gantz look? And by the way, if you argue he should be considered innocent until proven guilty, I say, no, he shouldn't be. He's never given Netanyahu that benefit; why should we give it to Gantz?

Why should we vote for him when he could go to jail?

No comments:

Post a Comment