Indictments were today filed in the Tel Aviv District Court against the alleged Trade Bank embezzlers. Esther Alon and her father Avigdor Maximov, in collaboration with her brother Ofer Maximov and others, allegedly stole NIS 216 million over five years from Trade Bank in a systematic, sophisticated and deliberate operation. The prosecutors are charging them with theft, forgery, aggravated fraud and money-laundering.
The indictment states that Alon was an employee of the bank between 1990 and April 2002, rising from teller and clerk to deputy manager of investments in 2001. In her capacity at the bank, Alon was authorized to handle customers' accounts, deposits and loans.
The prosecutor alleges that Benny Rabizada and Aharon Ohev-Zion, the owners and operators of casinos in Israel and overseas, as well as a check clearing business, loaned money to Ofer Maximov to finance his gambling, and guaranteed his gambling debts, allowing to gamble more. They collected his gambling debts to their own and other casinos.
Alon embezzled some of the money in cash through bank transfers through her private account. They money was transferred by personal check to Ofer Maximov either directly, or through her father, to pay his debts.
Another alleged method of embezzlement was to use bank checks on her account. Alon withdrew money from her personal account through personal checks written out directly to her brother or sent to him via their father.
To cover her resulting overdraft, Alon allegedly embezzled cash from bank customers' accounts, depositing it through bank transfers to her account. She also allegedly wrote bank checks to bank customers using other customers' names and debited their accounts.
Alon allegedly fraudulently solicited authorized bank signatories to sign the checks, claiming falsely that the checks were at the customers' request. Alon sent the checks to her brother or father, who forged them by countersigning the signature of the depositor on whose account the checks were credited. They would then send the checks to be cleared, and Ofer would send the proceeds to Alon to be deposited in her account.
At an unknown date, Alon allegedly ceased using her account for theft and fraud, after her superiors warned her about the large movements and overdrafts in her account.
The indictment further alleges that Alon, her father, brother and others, including Rabizada and Ohev-Zion, stole over NIS 175 million from Trade Bank and its customers through forgery and fraud, in that Alon issued Trade Bank bank checks which were sent to her father, brother and others.
To prevent the discovery of her theft, Alon allegedly created a false computer instruction that prevented periodic print-outs from being issued and sent to the bank's customers. She also ordered bank employees who handled the mail to send her outgoing statements for examination, before they were sent to the customers.
When a customer whose money had been embezzled would ask for a status report on his account, Alon allegedly would issue a false statement on her PC and send it to the customer.
The indictment states that money embezzled by Alon was forbidden property as defined by the Prohibition on Money Laundering Law (5760-2000). Since February 2000, banking corporations have been required by law to report bank checks over NIS 200,000, among other measures.
On April 25, 2002, the Bank of Israel audited Trade Bank. The auditors asked Alon about her financial transfers, as outlined in the indictment. Alon realized that her acts of theft, fraud and forgery were about to be discovered. She avoided further questioning, and called her attorney to set an immediate appointment.
Before leaving the bank, Alon allegedly forged the signature of a bank customer on a withdrawal form for NIS 70,000, giving it to a teller and taking the money.
She then left the bank on the pretext of illness, rushed to her attorney and used the just-stolen money to pay his fee. They then together went to the Tel Aviv police fraud unit, where Alon was arrested.
Alon is also accused of obstruction of justice, by allegedly taking notes of the content of her statements to the police while in detention. These included:
"In my testimony to the police, I implicated only myself. They money was given to people to whom my brother was in debt. I am certain these people know I did not incriminate them. I do not know most of them and have never met them. I told the investigators that in my opinion, none of them knew the money was stolen."
The prosecutor claims that Alon gave these notes to her attorney, with the knowledge they would be published in the press. She allegedly intended that they would reach the intention of people liable to be questioned, and in this manner obstructed the criminal investigation. On May 10, 2002, Alon's notes were published by Hebrew daily “Yediot Ahronot”.
The prosecutor asked the court to detain Alon and her father until the end of proceedings.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on June 13, 2002