PM not involved in submarine scandal, Defense Ministry official says

The Defense Ministry's top legal adviser, attorney Ahaz Ben-Ari, supported attorney David Shimron's claim that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's name was not mentioned in the conversation between them regarding the German submarine deal.

Ben-Ari testified to the police, as part of an inquiry ordered by Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit into a suspected conflict of interest over a deal to buy German-made submarines for the Israeli Navy. According to a Channel 2 News report on Sunday, Ben-Ari was asked to testify following a Channel 10 report that introduced a compromising e-mail from 2014, which he had sent to Defense Ministry Director General Dan Harel, suggesting that the prime minister was involved in the German deal affair.

"I received a phone call from attorney David Shimron, who represents the German company [ThyssenKrupp] that wanted to know whether we were putting the tender process on hold, to negotiate with his clients, as requested by the prime minister," read the email.

However, as Channel 2 reported, Ben-Ari reinforced Shimron testimony that in the correspondence between them, Netanyahu's name never came up.

"I never said a thing to Ben-Ari regarding the prime minister, nor did I know a thing about the prime minister's request. If this quote is true, the only way to interpret it is that Ben-Ari knew about the prime minister's request, about which I knew nothing. Any other explanation is simply untrue," Shimron said.

In response to Channel 10 report last month, the Prime Minister's Office issued an official statement saying that "attorney Shimron has never discussed the [submarine] tender with the prime minister."