Prime Minister’s adviser Yonatan Urich lied in police questioning when he claimed he did not know about Eli Feldstein’s arrest or the existence of the investigation before he switched his phone and deleted his messages, Avishai Grinzig reported Wednesday evening. Urich had changed his mobile phone the day after the investigation opened and Feldstein was arrested, without backing up the conversations on it. He was later accused of destroying evidence and obstructing an investigation.
In his interrogation, Urich tried to reject the allegations, saying the phone replacement was purely accidental and unrelated to the suspicions. According to the transcript, the investigator told him, “I am saying that you deleted this on that date intentionally to erase evidence and obstruct an investigation.” Urich replied, “It is impossible, because I did not know about the investigation or about Feldstein’s arrest before they were reported in the media, and that happened only a few days later. In fact, nobody in our Likud or in the office knew he had been arrested for several days. At that time nobody knew. Not just me.”
The new reporting says that version does not match the facts. Contrary to Urich’s claim that the arrest was only known in the bureau after media reports, the Prime Minister’s Office had already been informed on October 27, 2024. The first public hints about the case came later, on October 30, 2024, through Michael Shemesh.
The article says Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar personally updated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Feldstein’s arrest on the same day it happened, October 27. After that, the entire Prime Minister’s Office, including Urich, was aware of the sensitive investigation only hours before Urich rushed to replace his phone and wipe the evidence.
