Kfar Saba Mayor Rafi Saar, wife among 17 arrested in sweeping br

Police arrested 17 suspects, including Kfar Saba Mayor Rafi Saar, his wife and the CEO of the city's municipal economic development company, and detained seven others for questioning Monday in a sweeping corruption investigation involving alleged cash bribes, rigged tenders and ties to criminal figures. Officers from Lahav 433, Israel's national major crimes investigation unit, raided approximately 30 locations, including municipal offices, as an undercover investigation lasting nearly a year and a half became public. Investigators suspect Saar and his wife promoted the interests of associates and businesspeople, including known criminal figures, in exchange for cash payments, helping them secure lucrative municipal contracts and projects. "The city was sold, nothing less than that," a source in the National Fraud Investigations Unit said, describing the suspected scale of the corruption.