Former Director General of the Ministry of Communications, Shlomo Pilber, a state witness at the trial of opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, continues this morning (Wednesday) to testify as part of the discussion in the 4,000 case. This, after a drama occurred in court yesterday, during which prosecutor Yehudit Tirosh sought to declare him a hostile witness.
During yesterday’s hearing, discrepancies were revealed between what Pilber said and what he said in the police investigation. The judges rejected the prosecution’s request. Following the incident, Pilber is expected to undergo a cross-examination by the prosecution.
File 4000 (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)09:20: The discussion on telephony continued, in which the two options on how to calculate the prices of the wholesale market were discussed, and the fact that Pilber reached agreements with Bezeq regarding their preferred method, contrary to the position of officials in the ministry.
The plaintiff read in the auditorium an excerpt from the police statement by Adi Kopolovich, who was defined by Pilber as a senior economist in the Economics Division of the Ministry of Communications:
“After we received a directive from the CEO to produce a telephony solution in the format of the methodological resale should be on a minus minus basis. This means taking Bezeq’s retail prices, deducting a certain margin from them and determining the tariff for suppliers accordingly. But we wanted to create a situation that does not preserve Bezeq’s monopolistic rent and that it does not have double receipts for the infrastructure, ie both receipts for the Internet and landline telephony for the same copper line. We presented it at the office.
“It was before Sukkot 2015 at a meeting attended by the entire management of the office. We explained why the pricing according to Bezeq’s packages is problematic and we actually got a green light to complete the documents. We came back from Sukkot and Momo says he thought about it and he wants a much simpler process. We as an economics department said why we think it is unreasonable and we do not know how to justify and defend such a thing and it goes beyond what we thought was reasonable to do and then he says he will write and justify it and he passed it to Adi to do the hearing documents. “In December, a hearing will actually be held based on Bezeq’s packages.”
Tirosh: “What you said in your investigation regarding the discretion that is bound and biased in favor of Bezeq, since you can not reach an explosion with them and have to reach agreements with them and it affects your judgment and not from a professional place, it is expressed in telephony and later. The Ritan News (with Eli Kamir) because it’s a unified thing important to them? “.
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Pilber replied: “Everything you said is true and I also said yesterday that the issue of telephony, from the beginning, I recognized as a marginal and unimportant thing. Bezeq saw a diamond in their reform and I from the first moment did not understand the weight of this component so it was very easy for me to give it up.”