So yes. Despite the fact that the demand to acquire substantial sums of money in cash was seen by them at the time as "puzzling", as they put it, when "the entire bank was on its feet", none of the plaintiffs sought to examine the reason for the unusual requirement and why not to make a bank transfer or obtain a bank check if the transactions were indeed valid, and certainly none of them found a way to withdraw from the execution of the transactions (see also paragraph 7 of the affidavit of Mr. Benya Sidon; Paragraph 4 of the affidavit of Ms. Carmit Shimoni Cohen; Paragraph 8 of the affidavit of Mr. Elia Shimoni Cohen). To complete the picture in this context, it should be said that Cohen's version of the transfer of the place of discussion according to which "the cash bothered me less" (p. 333, question 33) is not reliable to me at all. This is because when the venue was moved, Cohen testified, as stated, that when he asked to withdraw such a significant sum at the bank branch, "I remember that the whole bank was standing on its feet..., and there was an incident there." Anyone who testifies that this was the response of the bank's representatives to his request to withdraw a large amount of cash, cannot claim that he remained equal in this matter. Cohen understood very well, just as the bank's representatives understood, that withdrawing such a significant sum instead of transferring it in other customary ways, is not a matter that is carried out on a daily basis. In these circumstances, it would have been better if he had not been naïve in his interrogation.
Second, according to the plaintiffs, at the time the contracts were signed, they were told that the seller was demanding that the contracts record significantly lower sums than the amounts they were actually required to pay. Plaintiff No. 4, who moved the venue of the hearing of Ariel Cohen, stated in this context, "I admit that the demand not to record the full amount in the contract bothered me a lot at the time, to say the least... However, it was only at the time of the meeting that it was made clear to me that the amount that would be recorded in the contract was only ILS 20,000. I was surprised by the demand since it was a significant reduction from the actual purchase amount, but I understood that it was not possible to obtain this because it was a condition of principle that the seller meant, and we simply had no other choice but to agree to it" (paragraph 10 of his affidavit). Cohen further argued that the transfer of the venue of the hearing was "a necessary condition imposed on us by the seller and his agents, but since we wanted to execute the transaction because we believed in its economic feasibility in light of the expectation of a thaw, we had no other option if we wanted to realize the transaction" (ibid., paragraph 11).