Last update - 00:00 25/04/2007
Police recommend charging former senior Bank of Israel officials with fraud
By Motti Basuk and Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondents
The police have submitted to the State Prosecutor's Office a recommendation to indict three former senior Bank of Israel officials on charges of fraud, it was revealed Wednesday.
The recommendation to indict Ephraim Gross, Zvi Tadmor and Ben-Zion Ben-Shushan was submitted two months ago, but had been kept secret from the public.
The three, who held key positions at the bank during the tenure of former Bank of Israel Governor David Klein until 2005, allegedly submitted falsified salary reports to the Finance Ministry.
The reports submitted to the ministry apparently did not include some of the benefits granted to senior bank officials, including the three in question. Thus, the reported salaries were significantly lower than the salaries actually received by the bank employees.
These fraudulent reports were discovered shortly after current Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fisher and Director-General Yaakov Danon were appointed to their positions. Danon submitted corrected salary reports to the Finance Ministry, revealed the allegations to the Knesset State Control Committee and issued a complaint to Police Investigations and Intelligence Chief Yohanan Danino. The police have been investigating the allegations ever since.
The salary reports were allegedly tampered with in order to conceal the senior officials' excessive benefits from the Finance Ministry. While these benefits had been revealed by the press in the past, it was only recently that the false salary reports were discovered.
The Finance Ministry, which maintains that the bank employees are grossly overpaid, has recently refused to reach a new salary agreement with bank officials.
At the time of the alleged fraudulent activity, Gross was second in command only to Bank Governor Klein, and acted as director-general of the bank. Tadmor was in charge of human resources and Ben Shushan was in charge of manpower reports.
The Bank of Israel said in response that the tampered reports were discovered by the current bank management and immediately transferred to the relevant authorities.
The police's recommendation to indict was first reported on Army Radio Wednesday morning.