State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss announced on Monday that everyone involved
in the “Harpaz Affair” will receive a copy of his draft report into the matter
on Sunday.
The IDF officer and Defense Ministry officials audited in the
report will receive a copy on Sunday at 4 p.m. and will be expected to file
their answers to his office within a month, Lindenstrauss
said.
Lindenstrauss’s office said that the state comptroller had arranged
matters so that each of those audited will receive the draft report at the same
time.
The Harpaz document – named for alleged forger Boaz Harpaz – was a
paper that detailed a strategy to get former OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen.
(res.) Yoav Galant appointed chief of staff.
Galant was appointed to the
post but in the end lost the job over his involvement in a land scandal at his
home in Moshav Amikam.
Former IDF chief of staff Lt.- Gen. (res.) Gabi
Ashkenazi, who received the document, showed it to several other generals,
including current Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz and former OC Northern
Command Maj.-Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, who is in the running to become Gantz’s
deputy.
When Harpaz was first identified as the alleged forger of the
document, Ashkenazi denied that he had a prior relationship with the former
lieutenant-colonel from IDF Military Intelligence.
The branch is also
being probed to see if Harpaz misused his position there – with or without his
superiors’ knowledge – to do business while in active service.
The report
is expected to criticize Ashkenazi for his handling of the Harpaz document and
his failure to bring it to Defense Minister Ehud Barak or even the military
advocate-general.
Barak is also expected to come under fire for the
hostile relationship he maintained with Ashkenazi.