Attorney and former head of the Israel Bar Association Effi Naveh has sent a letter to Army Radio in which he requests that all the content taken from one of his cell phones and being used in an investigation into suspicions that he traded influence in judicial appointments in exchange for sexual favors be handed over to him.
The police launched the investigation after a tip-off from Army Radio police reporter Hadas Shtaif, who had obtained a phone that belonged to Naveh.
Naveh claims that in the past few days, an unnamed person has been trying to extort hundreds of thousands of shekels from him in exchange for not publishing an "offensive" video taken from his cellular device.
A few days after Naveh was first arrested, a pornographic video that was reported to feature Naveh made the rounds on social media. But as far as anyone knows, the person in the clip is not actually Naveh.
Army Radio sent Naveh to file a complaint with the police, arguing that "there are not and were never videos of any type, certainly not any that were published. Any suspicion of extortion is a matter for the police," the station said.
On Wednesday, reports said that the police had received other complaints about extortionist demands through similar text messages to the one Naveh received. The police have looked into the matter and it appears that the messages originate from a foreign actor who is not in possession of any material. The messaging activity appears to be purely malicious and police say it is a familiar phenomenon.
Earlier this week, Naveh filed a lawsuit against Army Radio, Hadas Shtaif and other Army Radio reporters seeking 7 million shekels ($1.9 million) in damages for the alleged theft and hack of his phone. Naveh is claiming that these actions have had a severe and adverse effect on his privacy and livelihood.
In the lawsuit, Naveh claims that Shtaif acted "maliciously, intentionally and made a jaded use of journalistic respectability" by taking receipt of the phone – which had been stolen from him – hacking into it and then reading the personal, private content contained therein.
"The defendants dug into every corner of the plaintiff's life. Correspondence with his minor children, friends and clients; personal pictures and pictures of his children; voice recordings saved on the device and more," the suit reads.
