President Moshe Katsav of Israel is to be charged with rape and abuse of power, the Justice Ministry announced yesterday.

Lawyers for Mr Katsav, whose seven-year term of office ends in August, said that he intended to fight the charges and would respond today. “The President believes that everyone will see that he is the victim of false charges,” David Libai, his lawyer, said. Some of the complainants were motivated by revenge after being fired from their jobs, he added.

The charges against Mr Katsav include raping a former employee at the Tourism Ministry and sexually harassing three other workers at the presidential residence. He will also face charges of fraud, breach of trust, harassing a witness and obstruction of justice.

The office of Meni Mazuz, the Attorney-General, said that a final decision on the indictment would be made after Mr Katsav had presented his case at a hearing soon. The Attorney-General promised to listen to the President with an “open heart and a willing soul”.

Last week Mr Mazuz announced a criminal investigation into the involvement of the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, in the sale of a government-owned bank in 2005. And last year Haim Ramon resigned as Justice Minister after he was accused of sexually harassing a young female soldier. Mr Katsav’s predecessor as President, the late Ezer Weizman, was forced to resign after it emerged that he accepted “gifts” of $450,000 from a French millionaire while serving as an MP and minister.

Scandal engulfed President Katsav last summer when several former employees filed police complaints accusing him of sex crimes. The ministry said an indictment would include the charge of raping one of the four complainants. Mr Katsav can be put on trial while still in office only if he is impeached by Parliament.

Mr Katsav was born in Iran but emigrated to Israel when he was 5. He became the country’s youngest mayor at the age of 24 and went on to serve as Tourism Minister and Deputy Prime Minister in Binyamin Netanyahu’s Government of the 1990s.

He was the first member of the right-wing Likud party to become President and the first to have been born in a Muslim country.

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