Criminal orgs. are making millions off Israelis' backs - this is how

A senior police official said the police's five-year plan for 2025-2023 must concentrate on the financial networks of criminal organizations. 

"An organization's strength is built on its money; a lack of money will make the organization disappear," the source said. 

The source explained that the bulk of the money belonging to "crime organizations and crime families comes from two main sources: fictitious invoices and controlling public tenders on a huge scale."

According to the source, the police operate on "the premise that there is a collaborator with the criminal organizations in every public organization," in which manner the police will get to them. 

According to him, the crimes regarding fictitious invoices can be estimated to yield NIS 20 billion yearly, with the tax refunds for those crimes alone costing the state about NIS 3.4 billion per year.

The elite police units in Lahav 433 are determined to crack down on the organizations and undermine their economic capabilities to prevent them from taking control over public tenders.

How the organizations operate 

The official said that criminal organizations take control of contractors or permanent winners of large public tenders or provide services to those winners and thus essentially become the big profiteers. This was reflected in the public tender fraud case uncovered at the Defense Ministry, in which the tenders were transferred to the same contractor operating on behalf of a crime organization. 

"The Defense Ministry paid large sums and received work at a very poor level," the official noted in the aftermath of the public tender.

The official explained that the contractor who won the tenders shared the money with his partners, incurring much loss on the state. Indeed, the product was bad; it was done by criminals and, at times, illegal immigrants via a cover company and fictitious invoices. The official added, further affirming that meanwhile, the criminal organization gained much from such an operation.

The criminal organization earned a large profit on each project, with estimates reaching hundreds of thousands of shekels. 

"It was put before the Treasury and the Finance Ministry, and we must establish a joint regulator and, of course, work to crush this system once and for all," the source said. 

"Legislation must be promoted so that any company caught in distributing fictitious invoices and carrying out offenses within the framework of public contracting is disqualified and blocked from participating in tenders while simultaneously actions are to close that company.

"In this way, companies will sever ties with criminal organizations," the source said. 

"Such an attack by all the enforcement agencies will lead to the collapse of the criminal organizations."

"An organization without money is a dead organization," the official concluded.