Gill Nadel, Adv
The Magistrate's Court of Haifa recently ordered unsuspended prison terms of ten months for two licensing clerks convicted, inter alia, of bribing customs officials. (Magistrate's Court of Haifa, 1646/06)
The case involved two licensing clerks who handled the release of containers belonging to importers from Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The licensing clerks connected with two customs inspectors, and in the framework of this connection, the inspectors received bribes from the importers in exchange for ignoring various smuggled goods. The sum of the bribe that was paid to the customs inspectors was thousands of shekel per inspectors, while the licensing clerks each diverted into their own pockets some tens of thousands of shekel.
After a pretrial hearing regarding the admissibility of some of the evidence in the case, the licensing clerks confessed and were convicted of everything of which they were accused.
The court sentenced one of the licensing officials to an unsuspended prison sentence of twelve months, which the other received an unsuspended sentence of ten months. In addition, each of them received a suspended prison sentence and a monetary fine of 20,000 shekel.
The court explained that the proper punishment for public corruption is unsuspended prison, and only in special cases can the judge deviate from this rule and order prison that will be fulfilled by community service, something that was not just in this case.
The court ruled that the accused betrayed the confidence that was given to them through their service as licensing clerks, and did actions that were accompanied by careful planning to circumvent the law for financial gain.
The court ruled that the illegal actions of the accused continued to many months, and stopped when the matter was uncovered and not through any initiative of the accused. The court thus derived that had they not been caught, the accused would have continued their actions, causing economic damage to the state, and their own enrichment through fraud and bribery.
The court ruled that the crimes of which the accused were convicted harmed other customs agencies, importers, and merchants that acted legal, by creating unfair competition in the marketplace through a fear of lowering prices due to failure to pay the legal tax.
As a final point, it is important to know what steps were taken against the customs inspectors, and whether an indictment was filed against them. There is no mention of this in the decision and it is proper that the Tax Authority, for the sake of governmental transparency and the general public interest, update the public on the subject.
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