Former Nazareth Mayor Indicted on Charges of Funneling Tens of Millions of Shekels to Organized Crime Group
Former Nazareth Mayor Ali Salam and crime boss Samir Bakri indicted for allegedly funneling 61 million shekels from municipality funds.
Jerusalem, 13 April, 2026 (TPS-IL) — The State Attorney’s Office, through the Northern District Attorney’s Office, filed two indictments with the Nazareth District Court against former Nazareth Mayor Ali Salam, and the head of the Crime Organization Samir Bakri, and a number of other defendants, for systematic theft from the Nazareth Municipality treasury over the years 2015-2025, using a security company as a cover and fraudulently funneling public funds, along with extortion through threats, money laundering, tax offenses, and bribery committed by the Bakri crime family.
The Attorney General’s Office is seeking to seize approximately 61 million Shekels ($19.9 million) and has also requested detention until the end of the proceedings.
According to the indictment, the defendant Ali Salam abused his signature and approval powers in the municipality to channel public funds to the “Galilee Guards” company based on false guard accounts and inflated work hours, along with instructions to register “fictitious employees” and issue false pay slips. As part of the described mechanism, monthly cash payments were transferred to him (approximately 20,000 Shekels and later approximately 22,000 Shekels, and through the false accounts, sums of approximately 28 million Shekels ($9.15 million)were taken from the municipality’s coffers between the years 2015-2022 and over 30 million Shekels ($9.8 million) in the years 2022-2025.
