Police recommend charging former senior Bank of Israel officials with fraud
Officials suspected of falsifying salary reports in order to conceal from Finance Min. the excessive benefits they received.
By Moti Bassok and Jonathan LisThe 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.
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And this is probably the tip of the iceberg.....
bank officials are going down for this massive and pervasive fraud? AND are they loosing their pensions, benefits and repaying the loot they stole?
It is that human failling of all: plain stupid greed; the more you have, the more you want: that's the motto of those nasty people. They do deserve the heaviest weight of the law; but here is the crack, the greed guys can buy with dishonestly earned money, they can buy their freedom, or at least reduced sentenced. That is the paradox withion a dilemma of an open and law and order society. But, hopefully the stigma of being pointed out as greedy people, that used their public position to sack the blood out of the Tax Payers. Biblically, they should chase them to Sidom and Gomorr...as pariah.
All those 'Bank of Israel' ex-senior employees not involved with 'fat' fraudulent pension benefits/payments, please stand-up (if there are any!.