Sara Netanyahu Indicted on Fraud Charges in Israel

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his wife, Sara, in Paris in June. She was indicted on Thursday on charges that she defrauded the Israeli government of close to $100,000 in personal expenses.CreditFrancois Mori/Associated Press

By David M. Halbfinger

June 21, 2018

JERUSALEM — Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, was indicted Thursday on charges that she defrauded the Israeli government of close to $100,000 in personal expenses, largely by hiring some of Jerusalem’s best-known chefs to cater hundreds of private meals while covering up the fact that the prime minister’s residence already employed a full-time cook.

This is not the first time that the expensive tastes of Mrs. Netanyahu, 59, have come back to haunt her husband, who also faces indictment in a web of corruption scandals.

She is accused of going to great lengths to conceal the expenditures, working with an aide to falsify household financial records, misidentifying kitchen staff members as maintenance workers and directing outside waiters to inflate their work hours to show a less generous rate of pay.

Israel’s attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, filed the indictment over the objections of Mrs. Netanyahu’s lawyers. A private lawyer for the Netanyahus, Jacob Weinroth, said recently that he believed the case could have been avoided had Mrs. Netanyahu made restitution, but that she had refused to do so.

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