Liran Avishar Ben Horin, the incoming MK from Beyachad, is set to chair the Knesset Finance Committee. But the nomination has raised questions about possible conflicts of interest, because some of Israel’s largest companies are clients of the strategic consulting and PR firm her husband co-owns.
Leaders of the change bloc, including Bennett, Yair Lapid, Avigdor Liberman, Yair Golan and Gadi Eisenkot, announced Tuesday that Avishar Ben Horin would head the committee. If approved in a vote scheduled for Wednesday, she would become the first woman to chair the Finance Committee in the Knesset’s history.
Her husband, Itay Ben Horin, is a founder and owner of the strategic consulting firm Ben Horin Alexandrovitz, one of the largest firms of its kind in Israel. Legal commentator Avishai Grinzaig published the firm’s publicly listed clients. They include Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank, the investment house Altshuler Shaham, the credit card company Cal, the food giant Strauss, SolarEdge and the construction company Ashtrom.
These companies operate in sectors at the heart of the Finance Committee’s work, including banking, capital markets, credit, taxation, energy, food and real estate. The committee approves budgets, tax changes and economic reforms that affect the entire economy.
The issue has come up before. In 2020, when Avishar Ben Horin was appointed director-general of the Communications Ministry, she signed a formal conflict-of-interest arrangement; her husband held 50 percent of the firm at the time. Under that arrangement, she committed to regularly submit a list of the firm’s significant clients and to stay out of matters involving them unless the ministry’s legal advisers approved. According to Calcalist reporter Shlomo Teitelbaum, her husband also gave up clients in the communications sector at the time.
Critics said the scale of the potential conflicts this time is much larger. “It’s a weak answer,” Grinzaig said of the party’s response. “Of course she will sign a conflict-of-interest arrangement, but the conflict of interest is so large and broad that it’s like appointing Netanyahu’s lawyer as state comptroller.” He also argued that if the outgoing coalition had made such an appointment, it would have dominated the economic and political media for a week.
Avishar Ben Horin has campaigned on breaking up concentration in the Israeli economy. Critics noted that Strauss, one of the companies Bennett has pledged to take on, is a client of her husband’s firm.
In response, Together said she “will take up her position and act on behalf of the Israeli public in accordance with the law and the rules of proper administration, including conflict-of-interest arrangements, as she has done in all her public roles over the past twenty years.” The Knesset’s legal adviser is expected to determine the terms of a new arrangement.
Avishar Ben Horin served as director-general of the Communications Ministry from 2020 to 2023. During that time she led the privatization of the Israel Postal Company and the national rollout of fiber-optic infrastructure. She was previously chief of staff to the director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office. She enters the Knesset for the first time as No. 5 on Bennett’s list.
