MK Orlev considers complaint over snooping detective

Habayit Hayehudi leadership candidate could take issue of altercation with undercover private investigator to police.

By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN
Orlev 311 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Orlev 311
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Habayit Hayehudi leadership candidate MK Zevulun Orlev will soon decide whether to file a complaint with police over an odd altercation with an undercover private investigator at the Knesset, Orlev’s associates said Wednesday.
The incident occurred at the beginning of August when the investigator, posing as an American real estate investor, met with Orlev and raised eyebrows by asking intrusive financial questions and insisting on using the MK’s office equipment.
When Orlev inquired about him after the meeting, he discovered that he was a private investigator who had entered the Knesset using a different name than the one he gave Orlev and his staff.
Orlev complained to Knesset security, who conducted a thorough check of his office to see whether listening devices were planted.
The investigation came up empty, but Orlev’s associates said he was still summoning police, because he wanted to know who was behind the private investigator.
The November 6 leadership race has intensified amid mutual recriminations between Orlev, Naftali Bennett and Science and Technology Minister Daniel Herschkowitz.
None of the three candidates would comment on the incident.
The head of the Habayit Hayehudi elections committee, Rabbi Daniel Tropper, said Wednesday that there would be a delay in the release of the the party’s membership rolls, which were intended to be published Thursday. More than 50,000 people joined the party in a membership drive that ended September 9.
The candidates intend to go through the membership rolls with a fine-toothed comb, looking for wrongdoing by their leadership rivals such as forgeries, double submissions and registration of ineligible people.