In the past few months, the Competition Authority has moved up a gear in the fight against attempts to thwart parallel imports, and the fines are mounting: NIS 11.5 million on Carasso Motors, a pending NIS 17 million fine on Suny Cellular Communication, and other measures, overt and covert, against importers in various sectors.
It seems that the state seeks to send a message to official importers. Actions that in the past were perceived as part and parcel of routine relations with the overseas manufacturer, such as sending information about products reaching Israel through parallel imports and tightening conditions for providing service, are now liable to considered breaches of the law and to end with fines in the millions of shekels. The Competition Authority itself says that it is initiating checks and is not waiting for complaints, and importers are adapting to a reality in which almost any move vis-à-vis a parallel importer requires caution from a legal point of view.
Photographing the serial number of a product brought in via parallel importing and sending it to the manufacturer, requiring a customer to present a document that is already in the company’s system, or approaching an overseas supplier in an attempt to discover where products reaching the Israeli market originate - all these actions are in the Competition Authority’s sights.
In the past two years, the Authority has stepped up enforcement of the law designed to protect parallel and personal imports, and a series of proceedings initiated in recent months brings home how widely the Authority is interpreting the law’s provisions. For the direct importers (i.e., direct from the manufacturer), the implications are not slight. The financial sanction can be as much as 8% of sales turnover, up to a maximum of NIS 111 million. In exceptional cases, the question of criminal enforcement may arise.
The turning point came in September 2023, when an amendment to the Economic Competition Law adding a special chapter on parallel and personal imports came into force. Until then, actions aimed at blocking parallel imports could be dealt with under the general provisions of the law, such as the prohibition against cartels, but in such cases it was necessary to demonstrate a real threat to competition.
The new legislation considerably expanded the Competition Authority’s toolkit. It forbids a direct importer to carry out a series of actions liable to frustrate, constrict, or disrupt parallel imports, even when it may be hard to demonstrate that by itself the action in question will materially affect competition in the market as a whole. Among other things, the amended law forbids passing on information to the manufacturer making it possible to trace the supply chain of the parallel importer, any change in commercial terms that makes purchasing from a parallel source difficult, intervention in the way that a retailer marks or presents products, refusal to supply goods, and certainly any approach to the manufacturer in an attempt to halt supply.
To understand why the Competition Authority attributes such importance to parallel imports, it is first necessary to understand the mechanism. Parallel imports are imports of an original product of the same manufacturer but not through the manufacturer’s official representative or importer in Israel. Instead of buying goods directly from the manufacturer, the parallel importer can buy them from a supplier in another country and bring them to Israel.
The result is competition over the same brand. Alongside the product from the official importer, an identical or very similar product is on the shelf that came via a different supply chain, sometimes at a lower price. The official importer therefore has a natural interest in suppressing this competition, but matters are more complicated on the manufacturer’s side. "The manufacturers themselves don’t necessarily want to restrict parallel imports, because in the end their interest is to sell more," explains Asi Arbiv, co-owner of Klinton International Trade. "On the other hand, they want to maintain their relationship with their official representative in each country."
Photographing in the showroom
In the case of Ofer Avnir, an importer of two-wheeled vehicles, photographing the frame numbers of motorbikes imported through parallel imports and sending the pictures to the manufacturer resulted in a fine of NIS 15 million. In another case, the Competition Authority informed Roltime Group, an importer of watches and suitcases, of its intention to impose an NIS 11.5 million fine on the company subject to a hearing, among other things because of the transmission of information concerning containers of Samsonite suitcases brought to Israel as parallel imports, and the operation of "covert customers" to photograph competitors’ products.
Moshe Sides & Son, which imports confectionery, food products and baked goods, undertook under an agreed order to pay more than NIS 500,000 after an approach to an overseas manufacturer that was intended, according to the Competition Authority, to prevent a foreign supplier from selling products to a parallel importer.
In July, two more companies joined the list. Vehicle importer Carasso Motors was fined NIS 11.5 million after the Competition Authority found that it had put difficulties in the way of owners of vehicles that had reached Israel via a parallel importer receiving service at it network of garages. According to the Authority, Carasso demanded that they should present an original warranty, even when the relevant information was already available on its systems.
In the same month, the Competition Commissioner announced that, subject to a hearing, she was considering imposing a NIS 17 million fine on Suny Cellular Communication, the official importer of Samsung devices in Israel. This was after, according to the Competition Authority, the company approached Samsung with a demand that it should halt the supply of devices to the Palestinian Authority, to prevent parallel importers from buying them there and selling them in Israel.
The Competition Authority is not just responding to complaints. After publishing an opinion in September 2023, it contacted thirteen large direct importers in various sectors.
"The 2023 amendment is designed to safeguard competition against actions by direct importers liable to block or constrict the activity of parallel importers, in recognition of the contribution of parallel imports to bringing down consumer prices," the Competition Authority told "Globes".
"The Competition Authority is taking broad action, and is initiating its own checks to identify suspected breaches, as well as examining complaints received on this matter. The Authority also examines the conduct of direct importers in Israel and their contracts with manufacturers and suppliers overseas."
"Very painful sums"
Adv. Golan Kaneti, a partner and head of Antitrust and Competition at the law firm of Naschitz Brandes Amir, said that the main change as far as importers were concerned was the switch from a regime requiring examination of the general damage to competition to much more specific and wide-ranging prohibitions.
"The Authority has much broader power to impose sanctions, and it’s very extreme - up to 8% of turnover. These are very painful sums. I’m not sure that the market understands the situation, what is permitted and what is forbidden according to the way in which the Competition Authority presented matters," Adv. Kaneti explained.
He said that the difficulty also arose from the nature of the relationship between an official importer and an international manufacturer. "It’s not a regular relationship between supplier and customer. It’s often a case of two sides working together to develop the market in Israel, investing in sales promotion, and taking risks. A very special and careful tango is needed here," he says.
One of the most sensitive areas is service for products that have reached Israel not via the official importer. An industry source told "Globes" that there were consumers who bought products via parallel imports and encountered difficulty in obtaining service from the official importer’s network. "Some labs of official importers don’t provide service for devices brought in as parallel imports," the source says. "Why not give software service when it’s the same device?"
Has the stricter enforcement brought down consumer prices? That’s hard to determine. There are no publicly available data that isolate the impact of fines and enforcement measures. In a report released in October 2025, the State Comptroller recommended to the Competition Authority and the government that they should measure the impact of reforms in imports and of parallel imports on competition and prices, indicating that the state itself doesn’t know the answer.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on August 26, 2026.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2026.