One day after the morning raids to gather evidence against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, detectives from the Israel Police's crack National Fraud Squad returned to their usual routine of operational silence Monday concerning one of the most talked-about investigations in the country. But those familiar with the long and often painstaking process of building a white-collar case said that now the detectives' real work would begin. After spending hours in almost 20 offices gathering documents and computer hard drives on Sunday, detectives will now begin to sift through the collected materials to try to find a paper trail pointing toward a conviction.
"It's not just about sorting through the papers," said Cmdr. Moshe Mizrahi (ret.), an old hand at white collar crime investigations and the former commander of the Investigations Division during the period in which then-prime minister Ariel Sharon was under investigation. "It's about familiarizing yourself with all of the material prior to a 'frontal' questioning, with a potential suspect or witness sitting in front of you."