Police raided the government offices of the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Sunday as part of the ongoing investigation into the acquisition of German submarines for Israel’s navy, in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's former chief of staff David Sharan served as a company secretary general.
Sharan was one of a handful of people who were detained in September to be questioned over suspicions of bribery in the affair—commonly referred to as Case 3000—after testimony by Miki Ganor, who became a state witness, led to a domino-like wave of arrests, bringing down a legion of suspects.
Sharan is believed to have pocketed hundreds of thousands of shekels in the submarine deal when he served in Netanyahu’s office.
As part of the probe, Sharan was ordered to stay away from the company.
Police made their way into the premises in the late hours of Sunday morning with a search warrant and proceeded to comb through the site and search the computers used by Sharan.
According to the suspicions, state witness Miki Ganor, who acted as a representative for the German company ThyssenKrupp, transferred money to Sharan, a close associate of his, on condition that he leaks information on the tenders pertaining to security-related purchases.
In addition, the money was intended to solicit from Sharan information on ministerial votes in the Security Cabinet related to the tenders.
Initial evaluations by the investigators indicates that the information leaked by Sharan to Ganor helped the latter advance the deal in which submarines were purchased from the German company for protecting gas rigs.