Police Say There Is an Evidentiary Basis to Indict Minister May Golan

Police believe there is an evidentiary basis to indict Minister May Golan and people close to her. Today, police transferred the public corruption investigation file against the Minister for Social Equality, May Golan of Likud, to the State Attorney’s Office for review and a decision on whether to file an indictment in the case. This came after the Lahav 433 National Fraud Investigations Unit completed its investigation into her, several associates, and other people involved.

Police believe that during the investigation, which began following an exposé by Channel 12 and became public in September 2025, sufficient evidence was accumulated to bring Golan and people close to her to trial for various offenses involving public integrity that were at the heart of the corruption probe. The offenses investigated include bribery, fraud and breach of trust, obtaining benefits by fraud under aggravated circumstances, forgery with intent to receive something, obstructing justice, and obstructing a police officer in the performance of duty.

At the center of the investigation into Golan and her associates are suspicions that she allegedly used public funds for private purposes, fictitious employment, and concealment of funding sources, including through the association “Ha’ir HaIvrit,” which she founded before entering politics. Dozens of suspects and witnesses were questioned as part of the investigation.

It should be recalled that Minister Golan refused to appear for police questioning and posted inflammatory tweets against the investigation. As a result, police continued the investigation without taking her statement. It should also be recalled that Golan came to the police station while her mother was being questioned in the case and took her out of there, claiming she was not feeling well. Among the other suspects in the case are Golan’s associates, attorney Ehud Gabai and Chaim Menachem.

Last month, Calcalist revealed that the association “Ha’ir HaIvrit,” founded by Golan and whose activity is at the center of the police investigation, is facing dissolution after the Registrar of Associations at the Justice Ministry, attorney Shuli Avni-Shoham, filed a petition with the Tel Aviv District Court for a dissolution order against the association. During the investigation, police collected apparent evidence that funds that reached the association were taken out of it and transferred to Golan’s associates.

As reported by Calcalist in May, the basis for the dissolution request against the association Golan founded in 2014, which is at the center of the police investigation, is the failure to submit documents to the registrar, financial reports, bank statements, minutes of meetings, and declarations required for oversight of the association’s activity since 2021. “There is concern that the association is not advancing its goals at all,” the registrar wrote as grounds for dissolving the association, detailing Golan’s and the association’s disregard of requests from the Corporations Authority for documents.

The oversight process by the Registrar of Associations began alongside the police’s covert investigation, after the media exposure. Although after Golan was elected to the Knesset in 2020 she ceased her membership in the association, which she founded in 2014, according to police suspicion she continued to control its financial activity behind the scenes, with two of the association’s four board members being her associates, her mother and attorney Gabai, who served as authorized signatories.

One of the suspicions in the case is that the association raised money with Golan’s assistance, including tens of thousands of shekels from the Taiwan Representative Office in Israel, based on a false representation of how the money would be used to advance the association’s goals. In practice, police suspect, the money that reached the association was removed from it and transferred to Golan’s associates. Another police suspicion is that Minister Golan financed her associates using funds from the Ministry for Social Equality. In other words, various purchases charged to the ministry’s account or to Golan’s per diem expenses were used to finance her associates, including, for example, her mother.

With the opening of the investigation, investigators raided the Ministry for Social Equality and seized, as became known, folders containing grocery receipts, food, fruit and vegetable receipts, receipts for transactions at the lobby of the Kfar HaMaccabiah Hotel, and receipts for the purchase of books, a camera tripod, and phone bills. On the very first day of the investigation, Golan denied the allegations against her and even set conditions for appearing for police questioning, as if it were not a legal obligation. “I will consider whether to come to this political interrogation only after they immediately release the people who were arrested in order to intimidate me,” Golan tweeted then, and later insisted on her refusal to appear for questioning.

Police said today that, “after the completion of all investigative steps, the transfer of the investigation file for review and a decision by the State Attorney’s Office was approved by Head of Lahav 433, Commissioner Meni Binyamin, and Head of the Investigations and Intelligence Division, Commissioner Boaz Bלט.”