Report criticizes 'lavish' election spending by political parties
PM's Likud-Beiteinu, among others, fined for running large deficit during election cycle.
The State Comptroller criticized the "ostentatious" display – featuring popular singer Sarit Hadad – at the Likud conference which opened the party's 2013 general election drive, in a report published on Wednesday.
The comptroller, (ret.) judge Yosef Shapira, wrote in the report that "there is no place for grand, luxurious conferences on the taxpayer's dime," noting the large deficit the Likud developed during the election.
The comptroller's investigation revealed that the factions finished the election campaign with a combined deficit of more than NIS 60 million ($17 million). Likud-Beiteinu, Bayit Yehudi, Shas, and Hatnua were among the parties critiqued for their excess spending in the last cycle.
Yesh Atid, on the other hand, ended the election with a surplus of funds, spending only NIS 16 million while receiving donations to the tune of NIS 26 million.
The Likud, lead by current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, reported that its election-kickoff conference cost NIS 1,247,000 ($354,000) – nearly 35 percent of its spending on conferences for the entire election cycle.
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According to the expense report filed, NIS 80,000 ($22,700) were spent on "three songs performed by one singer."
"Even within the frame of an election campaign there is no room for throwing lavish conferences, their costs amount to large sums financed and paid for by the taxpaying public," wrote the comptroller. "Such an expense deviates from the definition of 'expense' in the law."
The report noted that Meretz and Labor also hosted entertainers at their conferences, but they spent significantly less on their events.
Bayit Yehudi was fined by the state comptroller, who recommended the faction be penalized a sum of NIS 380,000 ($108,000). The penalty is only 20 percent of the maximum amount the state comptroller could have set.
Hatnua, spearheaded by Tzipi Livni, was also fined: NIS 140,000 ($39,800), for exceeding the spending limit set by law.
Election fraud
The state comptroller's report also discovered a number of anomalies in voting patterns and voter rolls.
Scores of voters who had passed away before the January 2013 Knesset election still managed to cast their vote. Meanwhile, thousands of Israelis who are registered as residing abroad on the day of the election also managed to appear at the polling station, according to the report.
The report reveals a long line of shortcomings in the electoral process. Voter rolls had 1,162 names of people who had been buried before the polls opened. An examination of the forms at the polling station discovered that 12 identities had been compromised and others had voted in their name.
In the past, the Comptroller's Office discovered that thousands of Israelis over the age of 110 are registered to vote, including one man who is 179.
Since then, the government has decided to purge from the registry voters who are over 110 and do not receive National Insurance benefits, as they are unlikely to still be among the living.
It wasn't just the deceased who managed to vote in the most recent election, but Israelis who reside abroad also made it to the polling booth.
The authors of the report discovered that 5,007 voters, who were abroad according to Passport Control data, had been marked down as having voted.
