The road to corruption is paved with good intentions
Op-ed: The attorney general's attempt to improve the distribution of coalition funds is similar to a decision to improve a bank robbery preparation process.
The attorney general sprang to action following the investigation into the corruption affair which is currently identified mainly with the Yisrael Beytenu party. The attorney general has good intentions. He is hoping to finish dealing with the issue before the next government is established.
The teams' mission is to check whether the approval process can be approved: By requiring, for example, four signatures on each document, demanding a report at every stage, bringing in supervisors and enforcing maximum transparency on those providing the funds and on those receiving them.
What is this similar to? A decision to appoint teams to improve a bank robbery preparation process. The burglars will only purchase weapons after four of them sign on it, they will be required to compose a report about their actions at each stage, from entering the bank through breaking into the safes and collecting the plunder to escaping in their vehicle. If during the preparations one of the robbers spent money or didn't perform well, it will be reflected in the paperwork. Every stolen shekel will be registered, every glitch will be reported. There will be order, no matter what.
The patent known as "coalition funds" was invented by Yosef (Tommy) Lapid, Yair's late father. Towards the end of 2004, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon encountered difficulties approving the state budget. He needed the support of the Knesset members from Lapid's Shinui faction.
Lapid Sr. protested the hundreds of millions of shekels that the ultra-Orthodox parties managed to get their hands on every year for their sector. He wanted to prove to everyone that his pocket was bigger – and he did. Sharon agreed to allot as much as NIS 700 million (about $180 million) to Lapid, to hand out to whoever he wanted.
Lapid didn’t take the money home. Apart for one blunder – a NIS 2 million grant to the Israel Chess Federation which was headed by Lapid – the funds reached flawless targets. But the precedent was set.
It turns out that the road to hell is not the only one paved with good intentions. So is the road to corruption.
Lapid Sr. and his party disappeared from the map, but the arrangement remained. It was even upgraded: Members of the Knesset's Finance Committee, who envied the ministers for the money they received, began pushing to receive funds for distribution as well. The Treasury workers went along with it: The petty cash which was opened for the Finance Committee served both sides. The committee members agreed to vote for certain issue as long as they received money for projects close to their hearts, and the Treasury workers agreed to funnel funds to those projects as long as they received the MKs' vote.
According to committee members at the time, there was so much pressure that at some point it was decided to set up a sub-committee to distribute the money. The committee received personal requests from the MKs and decided who would get the money and how much.
In the Treasury jargon, these deals were referred to as "coalition funds." If you look in the state budget book, you won't find a trace of that term. Nonetheless, the Yisrael Beytenu, Bayit Yehudi and Likud members were well familiar with it. They knew how to use it for their own needs – Yisrael Beytenu in its failed attempt to take over the agricultural and rural sector and its wheeler dealers, and Bayit Yehudi by raising funds for settlements and yeshivot and affiliated associations.
Lapid's people – Lapid Jr. this time – were familiar with it too and accepted its existence. They thought it was part of the rules of the game.
I once told my readers about what happened to Ofer Shelah, a senior member of Lapid's Yesh Atid party, when he attempted to secure governmental aid for a foreign workers' clinic in southern Tel Aviv through the Finance Committee. The Treasury workers told him that in the past, the budget had been allotted to the clinic from the coalition funds of Haim Oron, Meretz's representative in the committee. How is that possible, Shelah asked. Why Meretz wasn't even in the coalition.
(In one of the committee discussions, in light of the overflow of requests, Oron jokingly suggested that a sign would be placed next to each hospital bed: This bed was donated by MK John Doe. The proposal was rejected).
I checked with the State Comptroller's Office whether the coalition funds had ever been mentioned in the comptroller's reports – nada. "It was raised a few times but it never matured into an examination," I was told by the State Comptroller's Office spokesman, Shlomo Raz.
He drew my attention to a clause in one of the reports, which halfheartedly complained about the difficulty to receive data from the Finance Ministry's Budget Department. I think he knew it was a lame excuse. The state comptroller failed on this issue, and so did the other gatekeepers.
There is a simple, elementary conclusion: The government must not be allowed to put parties or Knesset members in charge of budgets. Every acceptance of the current situation leads to wide-scale, contagious corruption, the kind which is now being probed by the police.
The recommendations to the attorney general can be summarized in one sentence: The distribution plan is over – no more coalition funds.
