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5/31/2014 Homeless whistle-blower gets indictment for allegedly harassing police

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May 31, 2014 Saturday 2 Sivan 5774 23:17 IST
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Photo by: Ben Hartman
Homeless whistle-blower gets indictment for
allegedly harassing police
By BEN HARTMAN
01/10/2013
Rafi Rotem allegedly repeatedly harassed public servants, including police from the
north Tel Aviv precinct.

A 13-page indictment presented on Tuesday for the first time to homeless Tax Authority whistle-blower Rafi
Rotem contained accusations of repeated harassment of public servants, including police from the north Tel
Aviv precinct.
In most of the alleged cases listed in the indictment, Rotem, a longtime intelligence officer with the Tel Aviv
branch of the Tax Authoritys investigations department, sent faxes or called police on dozens of occasions,
typically referring to them as corrupt or incompetent. Rotem, according to the allegations, sends faxes on a
near-daily basis to all kinds of people heads of the Israel Police and the Public Security Ministry (in charge
of Israel Police), the State Comptrollers Office, State Prosecutors and journalists who have since stopped
answering his calls.
As Rotem and his lawyer have not yet had a chance to view the document, the court set the next hearing for
mid-February.
Rotem, who for the past several years has been living on the street, first began working as an investigator for
the Tax Authority in 1984. In 2003, he was one of 15 senior authority investigators who complained of
corruption within the organizations ranks.
The so-called document of the 15 called for a commission of inquiry into allegations of corruption inside the
authority, including what it alleges are connections between then senior Tax Authority officials and known
crime figures in Israel who were subject to investigations by the authority.
Among the 14 officials who joined Rotem in the complaint in 2003 was Shuki Mashul, then head of the Tel
Aviv branch of the authoritys VAT department, whom the authority terminated in 2006 in what he and Rotem
say was payback for speaking out a charge the Tax Authority denies. Mashul joined Rotem at the
courthouse on Tuesday morning, where he called the proceedings a disgrace.
Mashul made mention of a Facebook post on Monday by Labor Party leader Shelly Yacimovich, in which she
accused Ashdod Port union head Alon Hassan of being a corrupt thug.
So when an elected leader goes on Facebook and publicly says someone is corrupt, its OK, but when a
private citizen sends a fax calling someone corrupt, its harassment, its an indictment? he wrote.
The State of Israel wants Rafi Rotem dead, thats how they want this to end, Rotem said about his case,
adding, Im not afraid of them, they can lock me up for 100 years if they want to. This is the biggest mafia
case there has ever been in Israel.
Rotem, a 51-year-old native of Jaffas Bulgarian neighborhood, has been on an unpaid leave of absence
since 2005, not long after he was reassigned to work as a clerk at a Tax Authority branch in Ramle in 2004,
which he said was punishment for speaking out. He spends his nights on the street, sleeping in hotel lobbies,
in his car or on a friends couch when hes lucky. He gets by scrounging together a few shekels a day for a roll
with some cold cuts, supplementing the sandwiches with free samples from supermarkets in north Tel Aviv.
5/31/2014 Homeless whistle-blower gets indictment for allegedly harassing police
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The rest of his worldly belongings including dozens of boxes full of documents from his years as an
intelligence officer with the Tel Aviv branch of the Tax Authoritys investigations department are crammed
inside a storage locker underneath the offices of the Maariv newspaper in Tel Aviv.
Rotem has been the subject of a number of recent TV and radio news segments covering his case. In a
column in Haaretz in June, headlined The corruption fighter who became homeless, former MK Aryeh Eldad
said Rotem lost everything since he set out on his campaign for justice, including home, family and property.
He lives on the street. And its a horrible lesson for anyone considering exposing an act of corruption.
The Tax Authority has repeatedly denied all of Rotems allegations, saying that he and Mashul have chosen
to use the media to settle their personal accounts with their managers and that there has been no proof found
to substantiate any of their allegations.
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