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A few weeks after Avichai Mendelblit replaced Weinstein, he instructed the police to upgrade the investigation against Dery. The main suspicion was that the minister had taken bribes and that his brother had acted as an intermediary between Dery and interested parties. The police also suspected that charitable organizations run by Dery’s wife Yaffa, which took in millions of shekels from philanthropists and the state, had gone to line the family’s pockets using sophisticated tricks.
At a fairly early stage in the investigations, law enforcement officials realized that those suspicions would not hold water. However, a joint investigation by the police and the Tax Authority turned up other alleged offenses by Dery, such as systematic cash deposits in his bank account and various allegedly dirty tricks in real estate deals that Dery concocted with his brother. His actions, a person familiar with the details of the investig