Court convicts 6 in case of moshav's collapse - Haaretz

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Tue., February 05, 2008 Shvat 29, 5768

Israel Time: 01:48 (EST+7)

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Court convicts 6 in case of moshav's collapse

By Guy Lieberman

Tags: israel, court, real estate

Six people were convicted yesterday, and one acquitted, in the case of a real estate project that never came off, leading to the bankruptcy of Moshav Sha'ar Ephraim after it accumulated debts of NIS 160 million. A liquidator was appointed for the moshav, which is losing its character as an agricultural cooperative and is gradually turning into a simple rural community.

The Tel Aviv District Court yesterday convicted the six of various crimes, including fraud and forgery in respect to the program to expand the Sharon region moshav.

The story began in 1996, when the moshav motioned the Israel Lands Administration for permission to expand and absorb new families. It wanted to rezone agricultural land to build hundreds of houses, each on half-dunam lots. Sha'ar Ephraim stated that it would be charging every lot buyer $38,000 to cover development fees.

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Two years later, the ILA learned that the moshav was actually charging buyers $75,000 for the development fee, in part to finance renovations of the original family homes. The ILA therefore refused to approve the allocation of the lots, yet certain people in the moshav continued to hawk the lands to unwitting buyers.

The six were also accused of persuading many moshav residents, together with the Netanya mortgages officer at Bank Leumi - who was found not guilty - to lend money to the moshav, including with the help of forged documents.

The six, each found guilty of different offenses, were moshav secretary Israel Wilmovsky, engineer Haim Saban, moshav accountant Yitzhak Hershko, moshav committee member Shalom Hadad, and Ada and Yohanan Briger.

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