The Israel Tax Authority announced yesterday that it has decided to indict Israel's leading soccer referee Alon Yeffet for tax evasion. Yeffet is suspected of failing to report overseas earnings totaling NIS 800,000 between 2001 and 2009.
What began as suspicions that former Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball official Moni Fanan, who committed suicide in October 2009, ran a private "bank," has since reached the highest echelons of local sports officialdom.
Last week the Israel Tax Authority announced that it had settled with 13 basketball and soccer referees, who officiated abroad, for tax evasion - settlements that amounted to some NIS 666,000. The list included soccer referees Asaf Kenan, Haim Yakov and Meir Levi, basketball referees David Dagan, Moshe Biton, Reuven Virovnik, Omer Esteron, Sefi Shemesh and Yari Reinish, soccer linesmen Shabtai Nahmias and Dani Karsikov, and sports officials Menashe Herman and Gili Azaria. But Yeffet's name was conspicuously absent.
Yeffet now finds himself in a similar situation to basketball referee Sami Bachar, who the tax authority indicted two months ago, claiming he hid earnings amounting to some NIS 850,000.
"In cases where the figures are that high, our policy is to indict," a senior Tax Authority official told Haaretz yesterday. "We settled out of court with the other referees and officials because the sums involved were relatively low."
Yeffet avoided talking about the issue yesterday. "I have no interest in discussing personal matters. I have a game to think about [Beitar Jerusalem versus Maccabi Tel Aviv], and that's all that I'm concerned with right now," he said.
"This was not a particularly complex investigation," a police investigator told Haaretz yesterday. "We quickly realized that referees are earning substantial sums abroad, which are not being reported anywhere. We approached the Israel Football Association and the Israel Basketball Association, received lists of the games Israeli referees officiated over in Europe, and drew our conclusions."
