Shas leader Deri knew about illegal funding of Shas party newspaper – report

Shas chairman MK Arye Deri knew already in 2022 that salaries for workers at the party newspaper Haderech were coming illegally from public funds via the Shas education system, KAN legal reporter Avishai Grinzaig reported on Sunday.

The letter’s authenticity could not be independently verified by The Jerusalem Post.

Grinzaig obtained a letter that was revealed as part of an ongoing criminal investigation against the newspaper and the education system, known today as Bnei Yosef but formerly called Maayan Hachinuch Hatorani.

The system is a privately run school system but receives full state funding. The letter came days after Grinzaig first reported that Minister in the Education Ministry Haim Biton was one of the people who had been criminally investigated.

The letter, part of which was published on KAN’s website, dated February 7, 2022, laid out how between July 2020 and February 2021, a teacher in the school system was paid for 19 extra hours per week, and the money was then laundered by a printing company called “Hadfus Hamahir” before ending up with the newspaper.

Deri intervenes amid allegations

The laundered money helped cover some NIS 5,000 out of its monthly expenses of NIS 14,000; the payments had been approved by Biton, then-CEO of the school system, the letter showed.

The author of the letter wrote that the newspaper had not received all of the funds it had been promised and seems to be a request from Deri to intervene. Grinzaig published a print screen of an SMS from Deri, in which he suggested that the two sides go to a rabbinical court to solve the matter. According to Grinzaig, the SMS was a response to the letter.

Grinzaig also reported that a “senior official” had been interrogated on Monday at the police’s Lahav 433 National Crime Unit.