[See similarly the judgment of the Honorable Justice H. Melcer in the case of the High Court of Justice 8886/15 Republicans from Abroad in Israel (R.A.) v. Government of Israel [published in Nevo] (02/1/18), at paragraph 59 of the judgment].
In Civil Case 29979-08-14 (Tel Aviv District) Renaissance School in Tax Appeal v. Bank Massad in Tax Appeal [published in Nevo] (August 2, 2017) (hereinafter: "Judgment in the Renaissance Case"), the court further ruled that the list of ways to prove the reasonableness of the refusal is not a closed list and that even "the concealment of material facts from the bank in relation to the actions carried out in the account, for example, the deposit of irregular sums, may lead to the conclusion that the customer did not act in an acceptable manner and in good faith in fulfilling his obligations to the bank. The customer may be perceived as having breached his fiduciary duty to the bank, which may constitute a reasonable reason for closing the account."
the obligations imposed on banks in accordance with legislation to prevent money laundering and terrorism;
- Money laundering is an action or collection of actions carried out with property or funds that originate in criminal activity, with the aim of assimilating them into the system of a legal nature and thus obscuring their illegal origin [Prohibition of Money Laundering Bill, 1999, H.H. 420]. In the picturesque language of the Honorable Justice Cheshin: "The goal of money launderers is to turn black money into white money, property that has steamed to whiten as snow, to raise money from the sewer pipes and to refine it with the scent of spring flowers." [Civil Appeal 9796/03 Habib Shem Tov v. State of Israel, 59(5) 397 (2005)].
In recent years, as part of the tools in the international fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, banking corporations have been charged with identification, reporting, control, and management duties towards their customers. The aforementioned duties were imposed on the banking corporations, since the experience in Israel, as well as in the entire world, has proven that money laundering is carried out in many cases through abuse of the banking system, while depositing funds in the system, converting them into foreign currency if necessary, and transferring them between bank accounts and different countries. Such actions can be carried out in a sophisticated manner: for example, by carrying out banking transactions through proxyes in order to conceal the identity of the owners of the money in fact, transfers of funds to countries of refuge (OFF SHORE) where the supervision of the currency is weak and the banking secrecy laws are strict, the transfer of funds through transit accounts and correspondent accounts in order to obscure their origin, the execution of fictitious loans, and so on. [See Ruth Plato-Shinar, "Banking Secrecy and the Duty of Trust," Mizanei Mishpat 3, 2005, 254, 254-255 (hereinafter: "Shinar")].