After stepping down as manager of the Insurance and Capital Market Supervision Department at the Finance Ministry, Eyal Ben Simon did not remain jobless for long. Not even a day, in fact. The man who had been responsible, among other things, for deciding whether the Phoenix assurance company met the criteria to acquire pension funds, and who shaped the rules for that acquisition, took a position at - hold onto your hat - Phoenix.
Ben Simon didn't even bother to obtain a legal opinion from Yemima Mazuz, the treasury's legal counsel, on the legality of his overnight metamorphosis from regulator to regulate. Nor did he ask the committee in charge of shortening "cooling off" periods to shorten his from months to nothing.
State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss knows whence Ben Simon's brash confidence comes that his career change would pass muster: "The entire move was done in broad daylight," the state comptroller explains in his report, delivered Tuesday. It was done "with the full knowledge, support and in some cases, the applause of the supervisors and managers of the branch."
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The commissioner of capital markets, insurance and savings, Yadin Antebi, shrugged off the responsibility for stopping Ben Simon, telling the state comptroller simply that law enforcement isn't his job.
Among civil servants, mainly the high-ranking ones who engage in regulation and work in close proximity to the private sector (so replete with temptations), the law requiring a cooling-off period isn't always observed. The law states that civil servants must wait a year between leaving public service and joining the private sector. In special cases, handled by a committee headed by a former judge, that period may be truncated.
It is no coincidence that Lindenstrauss chose to thoroughly inspect the government offices that grant sundry rights to the private sector - the Finance Ministry, the Tax Authority, the Israel Securities Authority, the Communications Ministry and the Israel Lands Administration, where all too many retiring managers skipped straight to a cushy job in the very area they had just been handling on behalf of the state. But now the pay is much better.
The ones left behind do nothing about it, perhaps so as not to imperil their own chance of doing the exact same thing. They prefer to interpret the law - on which the public's faith in the system relies - on the gentle side. Lindenstrauss explicitly states that the law is as good as dead.
The people supposed to enforce the "cooling off" law are the ministries' legal counsels. An employee seeking to move from public to private practice is supposed to ask for their opinion if there's any concern about breaking the law. Yet the state comptroller found that at the treasury's legal department, attorney Keren Raplansky, a senior official who had handled the establishment of a port corporation as the government ports were restructured, had moved to Ashdod Port immediately after leaving state service. She became its legal counsel and began representing the port against her former colleagues at the treasury.
Raplansky had advised Yemima Mazuz about her move, Lindenstrauss writes, and they discussed it. But Mazuz settled for granting oral approval. She didn't write it down, as required by the rules, nor did she report her position to the Civil Service.
The Civil Service learned of Raplansky's new job from the newspapers and demanded explanations. This time Mazuz wrote a detailed opinion. The deputy attorney general, who looked into the matter, ruled that Mazuz had acted improperly and should have consulted with the Civil Service.
In rebuttal, Mazuz (the sister of attorney general Menachem Mazuz) claimed she had never been asked for her position orally or in writing about treasury employees moving on, about whom issues of cooling-off had not arisen, to the best of her understanding. But the state comptroller says she clearly acted in violation of the law by not contacting the Civil Service, and by making a decision by herself on Raplansky, with whom she worked.
On the bright side, Lindenstrauss says the Finance Ministry doesn't ignore the cooling-off law and has instructed its staff on the matter.
Communications is the smallest of the ministries. It has just 150 employees who engage mainly in regulation. Its structure enables even mid-level workers to influence policy and make decisions.
B. had served as senior legal counsel to the ministry director-general. For more than four years, according to the evaluation penned by former director-general Avi Balashnikov as B. left, B. had been deeply involved and had personally influenced all moves in the telecoms sector.
But B.'s influence over decisions had been exactly what his next employer wanted. The company knew him well: two years acting on behalf of the ministry director-general before B. had handled negotiations with it. The company put him in charge of its regulation department, responsible for handling - you guessed it, negotiations with the Communications Ministry about regulation, permits and infrastructure available only with state approval.
Lindenstrauss writes that B. asked for permission to join the company and that the ministry's legal counsel at the time, Izhar Tal, provided his oral blessing, on the grounds that at the ministry B. hadn't been empowered to make decisions. Tal didn't write that down, though, or provide B. with a legal opinion. Nor did he involve the Civil Service.
The state comptroller found three other cases at the Communications Ministry, of workers from the Economics Department who had compiled analyses and opinions that influenced cellular telephone policy and moved to the cellular service vendors. Again the ministry lawyer exempted them from any wait, claiming they were too lowly and therefore, the law didn't apply.
The comptroller slammed Tal's conduct, scorn for writing, and neglect to consult with the Civil Service. Tal himself has long since moved on from the public sphere and now works for the cellular industry too.
Moving on to the Tax Authority, the comptroller found that 600 people had left from 2001 to 2007 and none asked the legal department or anyone else for an opinion before moving to the private sector. Most Tax Authority workers are pros with degrees in law or accounting, and a) are in high demand and b) should have known better. The Tax Authority management wasn't bothered, though: The internal auditing department never checked whether the cooling-off law was being enforced.
Lindenstrauss notes the case of a Tax Authority lawyer who'd been deeply involved in protracted negotiations with a law firm representing a real estate group. The day after leaving, the lawyer became a senior partner in the law firm, which shortly thereafter sued the Tax Authority on behalf of the real estate group. The lawyer himself argued that when in public service he hadn't acted to benefit his new partners, and that since joining the office he hadn't handled the matter.
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