Breaking Update
East Jerusalem men indicted for $28M fraud
Five East Jerusalem men indicted for orchestrating a $28 million tax fraud scheme, distributing fictitious invoices and unlawfully deducting input tax in.
The Tax Authority filed three serious indictments against five defendants, residents of East Jerusalem, as well as against three companies owned by them, for committing offenses of distributing and offsetting fictitious invoices and deducting input tax without invoices, in a cumulative tax amount of over 100 million NIS.
The fictitious invoices were distributed in the construction and manpower sectors in order to enable others to evade or avoid paying taxes. The offsetting companies included the fictitious invoices they received from the defendants in their books and unlawfully deducted input tax based on them, in amounts of tens of millions of NIS.
The indictments were filed by Adv. Abd Al-Qader Lambasher from the National Legal Department, Criminal, Tel Aviv, following an investigation by the Customs and VAT Investigations Department in jerusalem.
From the first indictment against defendants Raed Al-Nawaj’a and Muhammad Al-Nawaj’a, father and son, it appears that the father acted to distribute 722 fictitious invoices from five companies under his control in the amount of over 118 million NIS, and also offset 175 invoices in three companies in the amount of over 48 million NIS. His son, Muhammad Al-Nawaj’a, acted to distribute 263 fictitious invoices from two companies under his control in a total amount of over 32 million NIS, and also offset 103 fictitious invoices in a total amount of over 23 million NIS.
Another indictment against defendant Ali Othman states that the defendant acted together with others to distribute 129 fictitious tax invoices from a company registered in his name totaling over 13 million NIS. This indictment states that another defendant, Alaa Dakkak, acted together with others to distribute 55 tax invoices from a company registered in his name totaling over 17 million NIS. The two defendants in this indictment acted together with the defendants in the aforementioned indictment.
The third indictment, against Muhammad Farouk Hamidat, who acted together with the other defendants mentioned above, states that he acted to distribute 275 invoices from three companies, the first registered in his name and the other two registered in the names of others. In addition, the defendant offset 72 invoices in the company registered in his name in the amount of over 25 million NIS. The defendant also distributed another 184 fictitious invoices from companies registered in the names of defendants Ali Othman and Alaa El-Din Dakkak in the amount of over 78 million NIS.
