Another corruption scandal has broken at Ashdod Port. This morning, some 200 Tax Authority investigators and Israel Police Lahav 433 unit officers raided warehouses at Ashdod Port and the homes of over 15 suspects. The suspicion is of customs and money laundering offenses amounting to tens of millions of shekels using a chain of international companies to camouflage the offenses. Those detained are suspected of cooperating for years in smuggling and understating the price of alcoholic beverages, thereby stealing over thirty million shekels from the state, and also laundering millions of shekels.
The Israeli authorities say that this morning's action is part of the fight to eliminate criminal activity at the seaports, and follows an extensive intelligence and investigative operation at Ashdod Port that brought to light serious offenses and uncovered evidence against several of the people involved. "The Lahav 433 unit and a seaports taskforce together with the Tel Aviv and Central customs and VAT investigations unit and Ashdod customs investigators, who began the investigation of the affair, continue with covert intelligence operations around the port."
According to the Israel Police and the Israel Tax Authority, these units have been operating covertly for some time at the bonded warehouses at Ashdod Port, using advanced technology, and investigations have been taking place in Europe as well, through international cooperation between enforcement agencies.
Certain of the suspects are believed to have obtained effective control of companies that import alcoholic beverages to Israel, of a bonded warehouse near Ashdod Port, and of a private customs agency, in order to represent falsely the value of heavily taxed goods imported into Israel and stored at the bonded warehouse, substantially below their real value. They thus paid reduced customs duties, and concealed the profits arising from this through money laundering. They later tried smuggling goods out of the port without paying customs at all.
The police have made clear that the suspects are not direct employees of Ashdod Port or members of the port's management, but people who provided external services and worked at the bonded warehouses at the port, where goods are kept before being released by customs.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 2, 2015
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