Boaz Yonah's new entanglement opens the wounds of the Shrisk families: "We can stay, we can be a crook"

The arrest this week of Boaz Yonah, the former CEO of Heftziba, shook the lives of 4,500 families who previously bought apartments from the company he headed about 15 years ago in dozens of projects.

Two Frumkin

08/01/2022

Saturday, 08 January 2022, 09:50 Updated: 16:37

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"He destroyed families."

Boaz Yonah (Photo: Flash 90, Noam Moskowitz)

The case of the theft and fraud offenses of former Heftziba CEO Boaz Yonah, which led to the accumulation of debts amounting to NIS 1.6 billion and the collapse of the company, shook the Israeli public in the summer of 2007, especially the lives of 4,500 families. The construction company says they are carrying the consequences on their professional, personal and even health lives to this day. On suspicion of money laundering.

Etty (pseudonym), a 55-year-old mother of two daughters who in 2007 bought an apartment from the construction company Heftziba, had to pay an additional NIS 200,000 to enter her apartment two years late. "We were told 'you want the house - so you'll pay more money, or you'll get nothing,' we were literally hostages," she said. "We put him in jail for a few years, but we were put in a life sentence of a mortgage." With the collapse of Heftziba that year following the disappearance of the hundreds of millions of shekels in which Yona was convicted, the financial situation of Etty's family collapsed, as well as that of thousands of others involved.

"We were in difficult situations, we had to vacate the house while the house here was not finished, we had nowhere to go with two little girls," Etty described the days of the crisis. "There was a shake-up of life. We got into more trouble and more duties and more difficulties." According to her, to this day, years after the affair, "all the pipes of the air conditioner go to my house because I have no money even for a plaster ceiling."

"He was destroying families," declared Etty, who while he was divorcing her husband, claiming that the affair played a "big part" in the breakup of her marriage.

In all the conversations with Heftziba victims, they all reiterate in the same way how much the affair has affected their lives and undermined their trust in human beings.

Some even prefer not to bring up the overly painful coping of the past again.

More on Walla!

Boaz Yonah, former CEO of Heftziba, is a real estate developer suspected of creditors' fraud

To the full article

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Rachel, who also bought an apartment from Heftziba, said that "the scar is so deep that I do not intend to bring to mind difficult, bitter and painful memories of an unfortunate affair and one hopeless person." According to her, the collapse of the company "left us sick and full of suspicion from everyone around us. I am sorry for him and his family and for his parents who turn over in their graves." Alongside this, Rachel shared optimistically how her family chose to entrust the good with the bad. "The case only made us sharpen and strengthen important values ​​for our children, and it became clearer to us more than ever what to do in education, what is important in life - integrity, the pursuit of justice and faith."

Bracha and David (pseudonyms) attribute the diabetes in which David contracted to the family dealing with the situation in which they almost lost their home. "People had heart attacks, got sick," says Bracha, "the morning we found out, David turned pale, he told me 'we lost the house,' since it's dizzying, it's not the same life. Every time you talk to me about this story they shock me." According to the couple, they received their apartment years late and unfinished, in exchange for the hundreds of thousands of additional shekels that were required to be paid for the years of rent, mortgage, lawyers and additional percentages required to pay for the purchase of the apartment. They further angrily say that at one point they were offered to get a four-room apartment, in place of the five-room apartment they purchased.

The two were then in their 30s, raising two small children who, they say, had lost their childhood. "My son's first word was 'liar' and then 'thief,' which he heard when we were at Boaz Yonah's trial," Bracha said. "We were lost, we did not know what would happen to us. We lived in crates for three years. Although today I live in this house and I enjoy it, but for what we went through - I will not forgive the state, the banks and Boaz Yonah."

According to the facts of the indictment in which he admitted, Yona instructed Heftziba employees to act to obtain funds from the buyers of the apartments so that they could be deposited in accounts other than escrow accounts, which contained accounts of other Yona-controlled companies, as well as his personal accounts. At the same time, Yona and the employees used to forge entries in the company's books, which he presented to customers, shareholders, investors, accountants and banks. In cases where the lending banks suspected "that Heftziba's reports did not reflect its true condition"- Discount will direct employees to prepare new false reports.

"The bank is a crime, too."

Demonstration of Heftziba victims, 2007 (Photo: Flash 90, Uriel Cohen)

Nava Zargari (Photo: Courtesy of those photographed)

Along with the rage that the victims are directing at Yona, they are also blaming the banks that failed to supervise its conduct. "Not only is it a crime - the bank is a crime with it. To this day I tell the children 'when you come to buy a house, you only buy a house that stands on its own.' I do not believe in either banks or anything. A 51-year-old widow and mother of three children. "I bought an apartment in Har Homa in Jerusalem, gave a bank check to the lender's account with an account number and everything, and our miracle check arrived at Boaz Yonah's private account. NIS 490,000."

Nava revealed that the future of the apartment Lot bought in the fog while watching TV. "They said they were arresting Boaz Yonah. We ran straight to the pavilion he had on Har Homa, and all of everyone's binders were scattered - from a chaos of people," she recalled. "Our luck is that our building already had two floors built. A lot of people were left with only the flag."

"Call us on the evening of Lag B'Omer to tell us that if we do not sign the agreement of the lawyer who took all the victims under his care - they will take our house," Nava said. With my kids, you put dynamite under the house, and blow you and the house up.

"I'm ready to sit on you in jail," so he said, "No problem, come to court tomorrow morning." Heftziba and take the copy of the check I paid? ', He told me' no '.

I said to him 'So what are you helping me with?

Why do I have to pay you?

That's the only thing that will save me. "

"Banks objected outright"

For the task of dismantling Heftziba and formulating the solution for the families and all those involved, the court appointed Adv. Yitzhak Molcho as its special director and the official receiver, Adv. Shlomo Shachar. For months they formulated the complex arrangement under the principle of "distributive justice."

According to Advocate Shahar, at first this task seemed hopeless. "The banks were completely opposed to this outline," he said. "They have and we started investigations against them - that they did not really like it - what they knew and what they should have known about Boaz Yonah's entanglement and did not warn in advance, and when we submitted what we were able to see in the initial investigation against them, they also eventually contributed to the outline."

In accordance with the provisions of the arrangement, Nava says that in her case the court exceptionally approved to pay the additional payments only on the day she entered the house.

"But no one wanted to give us a mortgage for Heftziba's project. At the end the receiver forced the lending bank to give us a mortgage two days before we entered. "I am a widow raising children, with three small children you stamp and enter because you have no choice. It took us many light years of life."

"Financial volumes that the mind does not tolerate"

In October 2008, the Jerusalem District Court convicted Yona of a very long list of offenses, which included receiving anything fraudulent in aggravated circumstances, theft by a licensee, fraud and breach of trust in the corporation and smuggling of property.

On November 19, 2008, Judge Moshe Ravid sentenced him to seven years in prison, from which the detention period of more than one year was deducted.

Judge Ravid noted that Yona "expressed sincere and genuine remorse for his actions," but stressed that "the defendant's serious and difficult actions were carried out for a very long time and on a financial scale that the mind does not tolerate, with fatal harm to the entire public and especially the apartment buyers."

As a result, he insisted that the compensation component of the plea agreement in the amount of NIS 4 million "exaggerated with the defendant excessively," and sentenced him twice as much - but an appeal to the Supreme Court returned the amount to only NIS 4 million.

Finally, Judge Ravid ordered that Yona's registration be permanently revoked from the contractors' register.

"Families were destroyed."

Demonstration of Heftziba victims, 2008 (Photo: Flash 90, Anna Kaplan)

In March 2012, Yona was released from prison after serving only four and a half years. This week, after an undercover investigation, investigators raided his home, while he was in bankruptcy proceedings with debts totaling NIS 1.8 billion, and arrested him on suspicion of creditors' fraud, money laundering and bankruptcy and insolvency offenses. Investigators also arrested family members and his associates, as well as raided their homes and the offices of a corporation affiliated with him. According to the suspicion, Yona acted for a long period of time to hide income and assets from his creditors, by registering bank accounts and companies under his control in the names of his associates.

"I, too, am willing to sit for a few years for my children to be settled with 1.8 billion," Nava says in criticism of the limited sentence imposed on Yona, and the connection between his short stay in prison and his re-arrest.

"I was a person who lived financially well, and I carry minuses to this day. As we got off our assets - I for one moment will not cry on him that he and his children also got off their assets. After he got a total of a few years, what's his problem doing it again?" .

"Crime pays off."

Boaz Yonah (Photo: Nir Landau, Walla!)

"I do not know why the court was so merciful to him," Etty wonders, "so many families were destroyed. He stood there and said in court 'I fell from Igra Rama to Bira Amikata.' "But they fell deep deep because of this person. As every prisoner comes out and needs to be supervised, I did not understand why this person was not supervised."

As Judge Ravid noted, in his opening remarks at the sentencing hearing, Yona apologized, expressed remorse, and said that he "accepts full responsibility and is willing to bear the punishment." He even went so far as to promise that "he will work until his last day to help provide a solution to the buyers of the apartments affected by the Heftziba collapse."

"Crime pays off," Bracha declares. .

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