Legal problems are mounting for Israel's former prime minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu.
Investigators from the Israeli police fraud squad spent six hours yesterday searching Mr Netanyahu's home, office and rented storage space, and emerged with what they said were dozens of valuable gifts which he had allegedly retained illegally since his election defeat in May.
A police spokesman said that the fraud squad removed gold and silver items, paintings and other objects, which had apparently been presented to Mr Netanyahu in his official capacity during his 1996-1999 period in office, and which, by law, remain the property of the state.
Mr Netanyahu was not told in advance that the police would be calling. His wife, Sara, was at their home when the fraud squad arrived; he came home some hours later, with the investigators still present.
Mr Netanyahu is to be questioned by police today. His lawyers said that he would offer his comments at the appropriate time.
The search and confiscation of the valuables was itself triggered by another ongoing fraud squad investigation of the former prime minister.
Over the past few weeks, police have been investigating allegations that Mr Netanyahu for years accepted illegal favours from a handyman and home-mover, Mr Avner Amedi, who only submitted a bill for extensive work carried out on Mr Netanyahu's behalf at the end of his premiership, and then sought payment of $110,000.
Mr Amedi has spent several days in detention over the affair, and Mr and Mrs Netanyahu have been questioned at length by police.
Apparently Mr Amedi, in detailing the possessions he had moved for Mr Netanyahu between offices, home and storage, raised suspicions that the former prime minister had retained valuables that should have been returned to the state.
Mr Netanyahu's supporters in the Knesset claim that the police interest in the former prime minister is politically motivated, that the Amedi affair will prove a red herring, and that the police are leaking information to the media to harm him.
The hardline former prime minister, defeated by Labour's Mr Ehud Barak in May's general elections, has resigned the leadership of the Likud Party and given up his Knesset seat.
But he is said to be contemplating an eventual political comeback.
A second effort to dismantle one of the new West Bank settlement outposts outlawed by the Israeli government failed yesterday, when young settler activists blocked access to the "Magen David" hilltop site of four mobile homes adjacent to the longer-established settlement of Sussia.
The Prime Minister, Mr Barak, is said to have told settler leaders - who agreed to remove 12 of the outposts in return for 30 others being allowed to stay put - that if they do not keep their side of the bargain within two weeks, he will send in the army to do the job.
Israel's chief rabbi, Israel Meir Lau, has urged settlers to abide by any government decisions to evacuate West Bank land, although he said Jews should not stop believing the land is theirs by God's will.