Bribery-illustration (freepik photo)
Do you want construction concessions, disabled parking or to transfer your child to school? To speed up procedures, you can pay a few thousand shekels to a “macher” who will take care of pulling strings in the corridors of the municipality.
The N12 website reveals that the phenomenon of lobbyists connected to the local authorities is flourishing and is hardly being fought against compared to the same phenomenon in the Knesset and the government. The machers operate all over the country and earn high sums. One of the senior officials in one of the cities, who has over 25 years of experience working in local authorities, is now revealing the method – how any citizen with a bit of cash and unfortunately connected, can bypass the law and procedure in almost every possible area of local government.
“Just as there are lobbyists and lobbyists who come to the Knesset to try to promote an agenda or economic interest of a certain corporation, there are those who come to the municipalities to promote their clients in front of the officials,” the official told N12, “This can be expressed in a variety of ways, including business licensing, Licensing and supervision of construction, promotion of associates in the municipality to registering children for kindergartens and schools. The phenomenon is rooted everywhere.”
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According to him, the machers walk around the corridors of the municipality, know all the officials and senior officials, sit with them in cafes and create close relationships. Many times they use connections and even pay officials to get what their clients want, and they succeed.”
Anyone who has tried to open a business knows the bureaucracy of approval for firefighting, electricity, the Ministry of Health, etc. Those who want to shorten procedures can pay an expeditor to advance matters. Where’s the problem? The farmers manage to get business owners permits, even if they don’t really meet all the conditions.
“A business can pay a fire extinguisher a variable amount that starts at 5,000 shekels and in extreme cases even hundreds of thousands of shekels,” the industry source testifies, “I heard of a factory that paid one hundred thousand shekels and thus obtained a business license, but during a fire it turns out that its fire extinguishers don’t really work.”
The big money is in the real estate sector, where “construction inspectors on behalf of the municipality are supposed to supervise the works, but in practice the inspector, who earns a very low salary, is paid more and offers to renovate his house in exchange for turning a blind eye to the construction.”
Another area is registering children for kindergartens and schools in demand: “They forge rental contracts, fictitious electricity and water bills, pass it on to the Ministry of the Interior, and then officials in the education department register their children for the schools according to the fake address,” said the official.
Another combine can be found in the field of disabled parking: “They manage to promote in the municipality the allocation of disabled parking spaces on the streets, at the expense of disabled people who wait in line. People pay the operator between two thousand and five thousand shekels, and he takes care of getting them a doctor’s approval for a special disabled ticket, and also expedites the allocation in the municipality The parking lot,” says the source.
The Ministry of the Interior responded: “The Ministry, in its role as a supervisor of the conduct of the local authorities, works regularly with the local authorities in maintaining the purity of morals and carrying out its activities in accordance with the proper administration. In this framework and following the Zilber report, the Ministry distributed a circular from the CEO that refers to the issue of “lobbying” And guided the authorities on how to act in cases where there is a fear of harming the purity of morals.”
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