Ex-Police Official Admits Prime Minister Was Wiretapped Without Approval
Former senior police officer Shmuel Sharvit testified that police wiretapped Netanyahu's confidant Natan Eshel to intercept the premier without Attorney General approval.
The testimony of former Deputy Head of the National Fraud Investigation Unit, Commander Shmuel Sharvit, continues to shake the trial of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During a court hearing, Netanyahu’s defense attorney, Amit Hadad, presented documents indicating that police wiretapped Natan Eshel, Netanyahu's former chief of staff and close confidant.
The investigation revealed that the objective was to gather evidence against the "main suspect," whom the defense argues is Netanyahu himself. This occurred during a period when the law required explicit authorization from the Attorney General for investigative actions against a sitting prime minister—an approval that was never granted. Sharvit admitted from the stand that conversations between the two may have been intercepted, and confirmed that the wiretap station was dismantled after just one month because he realized there was no approval from the Attorney General.
The Wiretap Request and the "Main Suspect"
At the center of the cross-examination was the police request to obtain a wiretap order for Natan Eshel's telephone. Attorney Hadad presented the official justification written by the police to the judge to secure the order: "The chance to gather evidence is concrete and significant, and there are more indications that Eshel is in contact with the main suspect."
When Hadad confronted the witness, "The main suspect is Netanyahu," Sharvit did not deny the identity of the suspect, but claimed, "Gathering evidence does not require a conversation with the prime minister." Hadad continued to ask whether direct conversations between Eshel and Netanyahu were intercepted during the surveillance, and Sharvit replied, "It's possible that yes."
Regarding what investigators did with those conversations, the officer responded according to standard procedure: "Any conversation where we understand the subject of the order is talking to a member of the Knesset, we do not save the conversation; a decision is made by the court. Nothing is done to open such conversations."
Hadad pressed further, asking how the investigator sitting on the line knew it was the prime minister without actually listening to the conversation. Sharvit clarified, "The moment the monitor realizes it is a member of the Knesset, they stop listening."
The Sudden Dismantling of the Wiretap Station
Later in the hearing, Attorney Hadad raised the claim that the police were not satisfied with wiretapping Eshel's mobile phone, but also requested an additional order for the landline phone at his home, operating on the assumption that Netanyahu avoided speaking with him on his cell phone out of fear of wiretaps. Sharvit briefly replied, "I am not familiar with such a thing."
However, the most dramatic turning point in the hearing concerned the circumstances under which the wiretapping was halted. Attorney Hadad asked how long the wiretaps lasted and why they were suddenly stopped. Sharvit revealed that he received a direct order from his superior at the time, Commander Koresh Bar-Nur, head of the unit: "Koresh told me, 'Take down the station after a month. There are problems, take it down.'" When asked what "problems" his commander meant, he delivered the most resonant answer: "I understood there was no approval from the Attorney General."
This testimony is a critical pillar in the line of defense Netanyahu's legal team has tried to prove throughout the trial: defense attorneys argue that investigative bodies operated without approval to track Netanyahu's conversations and actions—an action that legally requires prior written approval from the Attorney General.
According to the defense, the police chose a "back door": instead of requesting permission to wiretap Netanyahu, they issued a wiretap order for his confidant Natan Eshel on the grounds that he was in contact with the "main suspect," thereby capturing the conversations of both men. Only when a legal problem arose regarding the lack of the Attorney General's approval was the wiretap station dismantled in haste.
