MK Colette Avital (Labor) on Monday accused a panel of experts charged with assessing the value of Holocaust victims' bank accounts in Israel of stealing from those who died in the Holocaust.

The committee assessment of NIS 400 million is less than half the accounts' true value, according to some estimates.

The panel's conclusions "steal hundreds of millions of shekels from the funds of Holocaust victims," she said. "The results of the committee's work are very disappointing."

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Avital said she is planning to initiate an urgent Knesset meeting to discuss the committee's findings, which were submitted to Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann on Monday.

The committee arrived at its estimate after adopting a formula that theoretically saved the state and banks hundreds of millions of shekels in payments to heirs of the original account holders, needy Holocaust survivors and Holocaust memorial institutions.

The panel had previously rejected the opinion of the Knesset Finance Committee's economic adviser, Smadar Elhanani, who recommended the value be estimated at NIS 1 billion. That is the same sum named by the Knesset Inquiry Committee on the Location and Restitution of the Assets (in Israel) of Holocaust Victims, headed by Avital.

Although the panel of experts was supposed to be independent, one of its members, Prof. Yair Orgler, was appointed to the board of directors of Bank Hapoalim while the committee was still carrying out its mandate. Avital said on Monday that the committee's findings spark a suspicion of conflict of interest, but Orgler has denied the charge.

The panel was meant to determine how to calculate the accounts' real value and how to divide the payments between the state and the banks, which were required to pay for the years the money lay in the dormant accounts.