Police grill Shas minister for alleged funneling of taxpayer money to party paper
Officers interrogate Haim Biton, arrest four others in connection to alleged transfer of public funds to pay employees’ salaries while minister headed Shas school network
Police summoned Shas minister Haim Biton for questioning Monday on suspicion of using public funds earmarked for educational purposes to finance a private newspaper affiliated with the ultra-Orthodox party.
A police spokesman said that officers in the Lahav 433 fraud investigations unit detained another four suspects as part of a months-long covert investigation, since made public, into the alleged use of budget funds to prop up the children’s supplement of a privately owned party newspaper. The investigation is ongoing.
Police did not name the minister under investigation, but media outlets identified him as Biton, a minister within the Education Ministry who formerly served as the head of Shas’s Ma’ayan Hachinuch Hatorani school network from 2017 to 2021.
Officers investigated the five suspects for alleged fraud, breach of trust, falsification of corporate documents and money laundering.
The police probe began in October 2024, when Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara gave officers the go-ahead to begin investigating Biton and others associated with the HaDerech newspaper, a Shas party mouthpiece, following multiple appeals to the chief prosecutor by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, an anti-corruption advocacy group.
State funding meant to go to Shas’s Maayan Hachinuch Hatorani school network was allegedly funneled to HaDerech via various backdoor methods from 2018 to 2019, during Biton’s tenure as head of the network. The newspaper allegedly used this taxpayer money to pay editorial and journalistic salaries.
Police said that during their arrest of the four suspects, they also conducted searches and seized documents related to the crimes.