"This court has ruled many times in the past that it is appropriate to impose significant fines on those convicted of economic offenses. This is in order to deny the benefit of the offense and even to harm the offender's pocket beyond the value of the benefit so that he knows in advance that it would not be worthwhile to commit it."
Counsel for the defendants presented general data from which it appears that the new shareholders invested large sums of money in order to rehabilitate the companies, a process that has not yet been completed. Therefore, I am of the opinion that the penalty area should be determined for the purpose of the fine so that it will not harm these efforts.
The state clarified that the amount of the fine agreed upon, NIS 100,000, was indeed on the low side, and that if it were not for the exceptional cooperation of the companies, it would have been appropriate to impose a fine of hundreds of thousands of shekels on them. I believe that the complex ranges from NIS 100,000 to NIS 1.5 million in the circumstances of our case.
- The second stage: circumstances that are not related to the commission of the offense and must be taken into account in the sentencing
Once the appropriate punishment area for the offense has been determined, the appropriate punishment for the defendant must be imposed within the same range that was determined at the previous stage (or in deviation from it in the cases listed in the law). In sentencing at this stage, the court must take into account circumstances that are not related to the commission of the offense, but rather to the defendant, as stated in section 40c(b) of the Penal Law. Section 40K lists an indefinite list of circumstances that must be taken into account when sentencing a defendant within the prescribed range of punishment. These are circumstances that focus on the offender, the defendant, and not on the offense. The conceptual basis for this is the individuality of punishment as derived from the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty (see at length on this matter , Aki Verbin, The Structure of Punishment, at p. 452).