Following the meeting of businessman Eliezer Fishman's creditors last week, at which the banks opposed the debt arrangement outline agreed between special manager Adv. Joseph Benkel and the Fishman family, Benkel today asked the Tel Aviv District Court to order a renewal of the hearing of the Fishman case, and to consider declaring him a bankrupt.
Benkel is asking the court to declare Fishman bankrupt, to appoint Benkel as Fishman's bankruptcy trustee, and to allow Benkel to hire professional services, such as an accounting firm, to conduct an accounting and economic investigation of the assets and business of Fishman and his family.
Benkel is also asking the court to appoint private investigators in Israel and overseas in order to trace assets over which Fishman has, or should have had, direct or indirect control.
Benkel also asked the court to order the Fishman family to immediate transfer to the bankruptcy fund all the money held in accounts in Fishman's name or in joint accounts of Fishman and his wife, Tova Fishman, or to their credit. Another request made was to allow him to put up for sale the real estate assets registered in Fishman's name or jointly in the names of Fishman and his wife, whether in Israel or overseas.
In his request, Benkel lists the recent events in the Fishman case, widely reported in the media recently, that have culminated in the case being sent back to the court for the institution of bankruptcy proceedings. "As of June 1, 2017, Fishman's legal representative, his family, and the undersigned managed, with the active help of Advocate Pines, to arrive at principles for an outline from which it would be possible to make progress towards the formulation and wording of a creditors' arrangement," Benkel wrote, adding, "On June 4, 2017, an announcement to this effect was submitted to the Court, to which the principles of the outline it was agreed to submit to the creditors at their meeting, were attached."
According to that outline, it was agreed that out of a NIS 1.8 billion debt, Fishman and his family would pay NIS 400 million to the creditors' fund in two stages. In the first stage, the Fishman family would pay the fund NIS 140 million, plus NIS 15 million to the Tax Authority for payment of the Fishman Networks' company's debts, and to enable it to continue doing business. Under the arrangement, in the second stage, due to become effective in five years, the Fishman family would pay an addition sum of up to NIS 260 million. The money would be obtained from the sale of the Fishman family's holdings in Fishman Networks and AT Refrigeration Holdings.
Publication of the outline for the Fishman debt arrangement aroused a public and media storm, following which the banks retracted their intention of supporting the arrangement, although in the legal hearings over the weeks, the banks urged that a debt arrangement be reached with Fishman, and opposed institutional of bankruptcy proceedings. The banks were probably afraid that their behavior in the Fishman case over the year would be revealed and exposed.
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on June 11, 2017
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