The fake sales bill was submitted to the customs authorities, with the clear intention of evading the payment of full import taxes, since the goods are subject to customs, purchase tax, and import tax appeals. Since the import tax charge is at the time of the release of the goods, some of the reduced import taxes were paid, after the customs clearance of about a quarter of the quantity of the goods.
On September 23, 1999, a certificate was submitted for the partial release of goods, with a declared value of $78,524 (P/82), and there is no dispute that this is a reduced value of goods, up to one-third of the price of the goods according to the original supplier's account (P/21). The total import taxes paid is NIS 191,703, and according to a calculation made by the customs official, Yaakov Chibotro, the amount of tax that was omitted amounts to NIS 81,296. As for the balance of the goods that were not released, a storage register was submitted (P/81), to which was attached the false bill of sale on behalf of the Manhattan Company of New York. The prosecution attributes to defendant 1 and Yehoshua Shlosh an attempt to evade payment of import taxes in the amount of NIS 341,827. In its summary, the prosecution confirms that Yaakov Chibutro did not make an accurate calculation of the amount of the tax balance, which would have been paid, had the balance of the quantity of goods been released. However, according to a calculation made as part of the summaries of the claim, this amount is not less than NIS 200,000 (p. 177 of the summaries of the claim).
As stated, the goods were not fully released, when the rest of them were seized by customs, so that the intention to fraudulently export all the goods sent to Israel was not fully realized.
As may be recalled, these are goods of the type of car audio systems and speakers, and there is no dispute that these were sold through Shlomo Sweet to Shmuel Arbiv, of the company "Clinton Electronics Ltd.", as appears from Arbiv's statement (P/265), which was submitted with consent. Shlomo Metuk himself confirmed in his statement (P/273) that he sold the goods to Shmuel Arbiv, while giving him invoices from the ICT company. In the same statement, Shlomo Matuk confirmed that he had done so at the request of defendant 1. As stated above, I have not found a reliable basis for the claim regarding the merchant Karim's share in this transaction, and it seems to me that we can learn from the words of Shlomo Metuk about the active involvement of defendant 1 in the sale of the goods, which is the subject of the third indictment.