Although the documents were submitted to the customs broker by the buyers, and not by defendant 1 or anyone on his behalf, I determine that defendant 1 should be convicted of the offenses attributed to him, because, as stated, the forged documents were prepared by him, and he was the one who gave them to the buyers for submission to the tax authorities, thus achieving a reduction in import taxes in the amount of NIS 38,813.
Charge No. 14
- In this indictment, too, we are dealing with a supplier's account on behalf of PLANAS, which is supposed to be the supplier of the goods, and the cost of the goods, according to this account, is $34,272. Here, too, the importer appeared in the form of Schloss.
The real transaction was made with Shunde Glanz Electric Appliance Factory Ltd from China, with the real value of the goods being $45,024 .
The records relating to this import were submitted on behalf of Schloss, through "Shai Customs Agents (1997) Ltd.", by the entity that purchased the documents, Kitchen Line Ltd., a company belonging to Mario Weissman.
In his statement (P/273), Shlomo Metuk stated that he had received the supplier's account of PLANAS from defendant 1 and had given it to Mario Weissman, and that he had also done the same with regard to all the other documents required for the release of the goods. He received the consideration in checks to the order of the Schloss company, which he gave to defendant 1.
It should be noted that Mario Weissman's name came up many times during the trial, but it turned out that the man was unreachable, and apparently left the country, without being able to testify at the trial.
As it appears from Schloss's account for the Kitchen Line company, the documents were sold by Shlomo Sweet to Mario Weissman for NIS 146,000.
The prosecution claims that a perusal of Schloss's invoice book (P/206) shows that the amount of the sale of the documents was not received by Schloss, but by another party connected to defendant 1, namely the Merig company.