Cops tell Knesset `dozens' of organized gangs are fighting a turf war in Israel

There are dozens of criminal organizations in Israel, Police Intelligence Branch Commander Ilan Franco told the Knesset Constitution, Justice and Law Committee. Franco said the largest and most established of the groups have clear hierarchies and are involved in cash-rich industries: gambling, drugs, extortions rackets and the sex slave industry.

He said those organizations maintain close contact with similar groups in the Far East, Latin America, and Europe. "It's one of Israel's less respectable export industries," he said.

According to Franco, a key watershed in the police fight against organized crime was the Trade Bank affair, in which some NIS 250 million was embezzled by an employee to pay off her brother's gambling creditors from the underworld. When the embezzlement ended after she turned herself in and the bank collapsed, said Franco, a major source of cash dried up for some of the groups. Since then, they have been fighting over a smaller pie.

Franco said the police now have an excellent intelligence infrastructure. As proof he noted that in the past year there were more than 70 arrests of people involved in criminal organizations - almost twice last year's arrest rate.

The police are currently preparing a working plan to be submitted to the government along with a request for NIS 500 million to be spent on a war against organized crime.

Committee Chairman MK Michael Eitan (Likud) said the war on organized crime is now a national priority and the police would always find an open door at the committee for whatever they needed in that war. Every request for changes in the law needed by the police will go to the top of the pile as a top priority, he said.

MK Azmi Bishara (Balad) complained in the committee that the government only woke up to the problem of organized crime after last week's failed assassination attempt on underworld kingpin Ze'ev Rosenstein killed three Jews on a main street in Tel Aviv. He said police did not respond with the same fervor when Arab citizens complained about organized criminal gangs in Arab towns.

Labor MK Ophir Pines-Paz said he was considering Public Security Minister Tzachi Hanegbi's plan to get administrative detention powers for the police to detain leading criminal figures when the police don't have enough evidence to prosecute the kingpins for what they believe are planned crimes. But Pines-Paz said that he would only agree to such legislation if he is persuaded that it is only used against "heavyweight criminals and not as a sweeping measure against small-time crooks." He said there must be very tight monitoring of any such administrative detention instrument in the hands of the public security minister, similar to the powers of the defense minister, and proposed that the attorney general be given power to override an administrative detention order handed down by the public security minister.