The external bank investigation that will trace Holocaust victims' bank accounts will focus on Bank Leumi. It is suspected that external parties recently withdrew some of the funds deposited in the bank under false pretenses. MK Colette Avital (Labor), chairwoman of the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee for the Location and Restitution of Property of Holocaust Victims, made the announcement.
Avital spoke following the arrest of David Golan from Tel Aviv, a former senior executive in the Bank Leumi credit department. Golan and a private investigator,.who was also arrested, are suspected of stealing millions of shekels from dormant bank accounts and selling information about the accounts to various parties.
Avital announced that the results of the Knesset’s tender for choosing an accounting firm and a law firm for the investigation would be published within two weeks. Avital claims that the disclosure of the suspicions against Golan and the private investigator reinforces the suspicion raised in the committee that the applications by heirs of Holocaust victims concerning funds left in bank accounts were turned away because the funds in question had disappeared.
Avital says that for this reason, “One of the first matters to be addressed by the external investigation will be to trace documents concerning the dormant accounts, the information about which should have reached the heirs.” The suspicion that some of these accounts belonged to Holocaust victims stems from the fact that the defrauded accounts were from a period that preceded the computerization of the bank’s books.
The police suspect that the bank official transferred various information from the accounts of deceased customers to the private investigator, who sold them to external parties. These parties used fraudulent means to withdraw the funds.
The Generali fund for Holocaust victims announced this week that it had paid $10 million to date to 551 applicants for 1,019 policies issued before WWII. This contradicted much lower figures given last week to the Knesset Finance Committee subcommittee on insurance.
The fund said that it had paid $1.4 million last month alone, the highest amount it had paid in its four years of operation. The amount was distributed among 75 claimants for 203 policies. The largest sum, $270,000, was given to a US citizen, who inherited the insurance policies of his father and his uncle from Czechoslovakia, who died in the Holocaust.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on September 20, 2001