Prime Minister Netanyahu
Prime Minister NetanyahuAmos Ben Gershom/GPO

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit on Monday evening released a statement with regards to the questioning of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The statement was released shortly after Netanyahu’s questioning by investigators from the National Fraud Unit concluded after three hours.

In the statement, Mandelblit officially declared that the probe against Netanyahu has turned into an official questioning, but did not provide new details about the allegations or actions attributed to Netanyahu.

"The claims that led at the end of the day to the decision to question [the Prime Minister] under caution, came up during the probe and, since then, the Israel Police have worked hard to find out the nature [of these claims] and evidence to support them. In the last month evidence was gathered that changed the situation in this regard," the statement said. "In this context, the results of the probe formed an evidentiary basis that justifies the questioning of the Prime Minister under warning."

While not going into details on the allegations against Netanyahu, the statement did note several cases which the police had probed and in which they found no reason to open an investigation against the Prime Minister.

These include claims about alleged prohibited funding for the 2009 elections, claims of falsifying the results of the Likud primaries that year, claims of receiving benefits overseas and the financing of flights by wealthy individuals residing abroad and claims of double billing of flights abroad.

“As noted, the opinions presented to the Attorney General [on these issues], which he adopted, indicate that the findings on these issues at this stage cannot justify the opening of a criminal investigation,” said Mandelblit’s statement.

The allegations against Netanyahu have been described by Israeli media outlets as extremely serious.

Authorities, however, have volunteered little information on the investigation, and some have suggested the Israeli media is actively seeking to play up the inquiry in an effort to unseat the Prime Minister.

Prominent American Jewish jurist Alan Dershowitz told Israel Hayom in an interview published Sunday that Netanyahu should be granted temporary immunity from such investigations, to prevent the Israeli left and media from hobbling the government at such a critical time.