Another common argument of the appellants is that the funds received by them were legitimate salaries for the work they actually performed at the Neve Simcha company, and not a prohibited payment from the association.
Adv. Shachor further claims that he ceased to serve as a member of the association's board after 2011 and that he remained registered as a trustee in some of the endowments, only formally.
- Appeals are to be dismissed. After reviewing the material before us and hearing the arguments of the parties, we adopt the judgment of the trial court by virtue of Regulation 148(II) For the Regulations Civil Procedure, The Nine"T-2018.
More than necessary, we will discuss the main points. We will preface by noting that at the end of the day, the appeal is directed towards findings of fact and reliability, and in this context we will turn to the words of the trial court: "My impression from the witnesses was that there is more hidden than revealed, and that the respondents [the appellants – 11] avoided giving substantive and short answers, and instead went around factual questions that were asked to the point of misunderstanding the very essence of the answer to a simple question that was asked".
- The claim for a separate legal personality of Neve Simcha is based on the structure of the association's holdings, as seen in the diagram below:
As trustees of the endowment, Yosef and Adv. Shachor each held 25% of the two companies registered in Panama at the time (the other 50% was held by two other defendants in the trial court who eventually reached a settlement with the special manager). Yosef served as a board member of the association since 1982, served as a trustee of some of the endowments since 2000 (approximately) and served as a director of Neve Simcha since 2010. Benu Haim Defined as a secretary The association began in 2001 and served as a director in Neve Simcha since 2014.
The trial court accepted the special manager's argument for a mixing of assets between the association and its institutions and the endowment assets, and the argument that the association has the same law, the Wolf Endowment and Neve Simcha. On the factual level, it was held that The payments paid to the appellants were not approved at the general meeting, and were not reported to the Registrar of Associations; Because the appellants conducted and operated with the assets of the association and the endowment as their own; and that the extensive system of the structure of the holdings of the association's assets and the endowment assets of the "Etz Haim Institutions" was deliberately made in order to circumvent the statutory restrictions on receiving salaries and withdrawing funds. The trial court found that there was a complete "mixing of assets", and that the appellants managed all the institutions as a single economic unit, with Neve Simcha being an asset of the endowment and the association being the sole beneficiary. In this context, the trial court noted that the appellants themselves "They connected Neve Simcha to the association – like a thread – both in the agreement mentioned by the special director, and in their responses to the request and in their interrogation during the hearing."