MK Yitzchak Cohen of Shas, a member of the Knesset subcommittee dealing with the Israel Broadcasting Authority\'s budget, explained to Arutz-7 today why he and his colleagues refuse to approve the IBA budget that the government recently voted on:
\"It\'s not only that the IBA has hidden some information from us - the story is much worse, and a scandal of unprecedented proportions since the establishment of the State. The IBA is a public body that gave false information to its executive board, and then this information reached the Cabinet, which approved the budget based on this false information. But thank G-d the Knesset Finance Committee has members that know how to understand the numbers and uncover the falsehoods that border on the criminal - and so the budget has not been approved, because there is no way that we, as honest people, can allow the IBA to have a budget...
\"In the meantime, the IBA has not agreed to allow an investigation by an independent accountant, and we have received information on an attempt to destroy evidence. We are considering involving the police ourselves if they do not agree to the investigation... As of now, therefore, the IBA is not allowed to collect the annual television fee from viewers, and I have heard that they are not able to pay salaries - so we therefore ask that they allow the accountant\'s investigation so that we can approve the interim budget... The entire subcommittee is comprised of MKs from different parties, left and right, and we all agree on this [except, Cohen acknowledged, for Chairman Yossi Katz (Labor) - ed. note], so that there is no problem of political ideologies here...
\"All we want is good management. If in a Yesha settlement or some hareidi institution there had been found one millionth of what was found here, the whole country would have been in an uproar, and the IBA would have sent all its reporters to cover the story… Kudos to Arutz-7 for bringing this out and covering this story, because there is some kind of conspiracy of silence among the other media about this.\"
\"It\'s not only that the IBA has hidden some information from us - the story is much worse, and a scandal of unprecedented proportions since the establishment of the State. The IBA is a public body that gave false information to its executive board, and then this information reached the Cabinet, which approved the budget based on this false information. But thank G-d the Knesset Finance Committee has members that know how to understand the numbers and uncover the falsehoods that border on the criminal - and so the budget has not been approved, because there is no way that we, as honest people, can allow the IBA to have a budget...
\"In the meantime, the IBA has not agreed to allow an investigation by an independent accountant, and we have received information on an attempt to destroy evidence. We are considering involving the police ourselves if they do not agree to the investigation... As of now, therefore, the IBA is not allowed to collect the annual television fee from viewers, and I have heard that they are not able to pay salaries - so we therefore ask that they allow the accountant\'s investigation so that we can approve the interim budget... The entire subcommittee is comprised of MKs from different parties, left and right, and we all agree on this [except, Cohen acknowledged, for Chairman Yossi Katz (Labor) - ed. note], so that there is no problem of political ideologies here...
\"All we want is good management. If in a Yesha settlement or some hareidi institution there had been found one millionth of what was found here, the whole country would have been in an uproar, and the IBA would have sent all its reporters to cover the story… Kudos to Arutz-7 for bringing this out and covering this story, because there is some kind of conspiracy of silence among the other media about this.\"