Netanyahu’s attorneys met Wednesday with Israel’s attorney general and other top law enforcement officials in long-awaited pre-indictment hearing of Israeli’s Netanyahu on a series of corruption scandals.

The hearing is the last step before formal charges are pressed and has been delayed many times already. It looms large over Netanyahu’s efforts to extend his political career, CBC reported.

The sessions are expected to last four days and they come just two weeks after Israel’s second inconclusive election of the year.

Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit has recommended indicting Netanyahu on bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges in three different cases. The hearing offers Israeli’s Netanyahu legal team a chance to present its defense in hopes of convincing authorities to drop the charges.

A decision on whether to indict is expected by the end of the year.

The scandals have engulfed Netanyahu’s family and his inner circle, with at least three former close confidants turning state’s witnesses and testifying against him.

Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, have long been known for their penchant for an expensive lifestyle and questionable use of public funds. Mrs. Netanyahu was convicted of misusing state funds after she reached a plea bargain settling allegations that she overspent some $100,000 US of state money on lavish meals. She’d previously been indicted for graft, fraud and breach of trust.

According to the Guardian, Netanyahu could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of bribery and a maximum three-year term for fraud and breach of trust.

The first case, known as Case 1,000, involves allegations of receiving gifts, including cigars, champagne and jewellery, from billionaires, among them the Australian casino operator James Packer, allegedly in exchange for favours. In Case 2,000, Netanyahu is accused of colluding with the country’s top-selling newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, to hurt its competition in exchange for favourable coverage.

In the third and most damning, Case 4,000, Netanyahu is accused of offering incentives to the Israeli telecoms provider Bezeq in exchange for positive stories on an online news website it owns.

The pre-trial hearing is not a court appearance, and Netanyahu is not expected to be present. Instead, it grants his legal team a last-ditch chance to convince the attorney general to either scrap or reduce the charges.

Hearings are scheduled for Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday and Monday, but Mandelblit could delay his decision until December or even later. Even then, it could take months before his trial begins.

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The most damaging scandal of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency deepened on Saturday with his interior minister due to face a grilling in parliament over his response to a top security aide of Mr. Macron caught on video beating up a young man at a Paris protest in May.

Opposition lawmakers have demanded that Mr. Macron, who has so far remained silent about the incident, explain the government’s stand after the videos of his aide Alexandre Benalla emerged this week.

“If Macron doesn’t explain himself the Benalla affair will become the Macron affair,” far-right leader Marine Le Pen said in a tweet.

Laurent Wauquiez, the head of the Republicans party, accused the government of “trying to camouflage a matter of state” and said Mr. Macron had to clarify the matter to the French people, AFP reported.

And far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon from the France Unbowed party called it a scandal of Watergate proportions and accused Mr. Macron of “organizing a personal militia”.

Watergate was the name of a dirty tricks scandal that led to the resignation of former US President Richard Nixon in 1974.

Mr. Benalla, 26, was initially suspended without pay but on Friday Mr. Macron fired his former security aide, who was taken into custody suspected of unlawfully receiving police surveillance footage in a bid to clear his name.

He is to face a magistrate on Sunday, Paris prosecutors said.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb has been heavily criticized over the affair, with some opposition lawmakers saying his job is on the line after press reports that he knew about Benalla’s violence.

Mr. Collomb will be publicly questioned from 10am (local time) on Monday morning by the Law Commission of the National Assembly, the head of the lower house of parliament announced.

Also on Saturday, three police officers were taken into custody suspected of providing the surveillance footage to Mr. Benalla. They, too, will go before a magistrate on Sunday.

They were accused of “misappropriation of images from a video surveillance system”, as well as a “violation of professional secrets”, the prosecutor’s office said.

The Paris police prefecture said the footage was “improperly disclosed to a third party on the evening of July 18”, the same night the newspaper Le Monde published the video that sparked the scandal.

That video, shot on a smartphone, showed Mr. Benalla wearing a riot police helmet and surrounded by officers, manhandling and striking a protester during a May 1 demonstration.

In a second video published by the newspaper late Thursday, Mr. Benalla — who has never been a policeman — is also seen violently wrestling a young woman to the ground during scuffles on a square near the Rue Mouffetard, a picturesque street in the fifth arrondissement.

The three senior officers taken into custody, who belong to the Paris department of public order and traffic, include a deputy chief of staff and a commissioner in the fifth arrondissement, as well as the commander in charge of relations between the prefecture and the Elysee Palace, said several sources close to the case.

Mr. Benalla’s home in the southwestern suburbs of Paris was raided on Saturday.

Vincent Crase, a security aide for Macron’s Republic on the Move party and an associate of Mr. Benalla’s who also intervened during the May protest, was also taken into custody on Friday.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said on Saturday that the custody of both Mr. Benalla and Mr. Crase had been extended by 24 hours.

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