Three more people including the daughter-in-law of Bezeq’s controlling shareholder have been questioned by the Israel Securities Authority in the securities-fraud probe into the telecom company and its Yes subsidiary.
On Tuesday, the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court lifted a gag order on publication of these details at the request of TheMarker and other media outlets.
In addition to Orna Peled-Elovitch, the wife of controlling shareholder Shaul Elovitch’s son Or, the two others are Yaron Ra’anan, the director of the economics department at Bezeq’s Yes satellite-television subsidiary, and Oren Bergman, the finance chief at Yes.
The three were released under restrictions following their questioning.
The Israel Security Authority’s criminal investigation has been conducted in recent months under a veil of secrecy and has centered around suspicions of improprieties involving Bezeq’s acquisition of Yes in 2015.
Earlier in the investigation, Elovitch himself was arrested.
He was released subject to restrictions in late June. Since then many people have been summoned for questioning, but at the height of the investigation, the magistrate’s court issued a gag order.
The order was made at the request of the security authority’s general counsel, Eran Shaham-Shavit, after the authority expressed concern that reporting on the case could interfere with the investigation, in part because one suspicion against Elovitch was that he obstructed justice.
The securities authority initially requested a broader order that would even have barred reporting on the existence of the gag order, which was granted, but the court later reconsidered that aspect of the order.
