It was the customs broker Shlomo Arsban who submitted the import receipts, P/81 and P/83. Arsban testified that he had received all the documents from Yehoshua Shlosh, and noted that they were notes signed by Shai customs agents. The name of the importer mentioned in these records was the name of an ICT company, to which was attached, as aforesaid, a sales account from the Manhattan company, ostensibly the supplier of the goods. As noted, the value of the goods appearing in the Manhattan account ($285,000) is significantly less than the amount appearing in the transaction with Rasco ($405,861).
The prosecution claims that ICT, a corporation registered in Israel, is controlled by defendant 1 and Yehoshua Shlosh, who acted in it as their own. It is generally agreed that those who are registered as shareholders in the company are Jan Schwartzman and Meir Ben-Shimon. There is also no dispute that this company and JCC were registered by CPA Natan Harpaz, who was convicted, according to his confession, in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Magistrate's Court of fraudulently registering the companies (the indictment in his case – P/236). CPA Harpaz testified that the person who asked him to establish the companies was Yehoshua Shlosh. According to him, those who registered as shareholders, Ben-Shimon and Schwartzman, did not sign the companies' basic documents, nor even the memoranda and articles of association, and needless to say, they did not even sign requests to open VAT files. Schwartzman appeared to testify in court and declared that the documents supposedly signed in his name did not contain his signatures, and that he knew nothing about these companies and did not know any of the people who were operating. Ben-Shimon also testified that he did not sign the basic documents of the companies and that he did not know Harpaz CPA at all.
In these circumstances, and despite the defense's attempts to cast aspersions on the testimony of CPA Harpaz, I have no basis to doubt his words, and I hereby determine that the companies ICT and JCC were registered by CPA Harpaz at the request of Yehoshua Shlosh, in order to serve him and defendant 1 for their purposes. It seems that no one will dispute that the aforementioned companies had no business activity, and that they were used mainly for the submission of registers, falsely portrayed as having imported the goods, and as such, they should be treated as straw companies.