With regard to the registration of the company, in the name of Avraham Sztgagovsky and the Forum Office company, which, according to the prosecution, were straw entities, which were registered by the defendant as owners of the Merig company, without knowing anything about it, defendant 1 claims that these are mere claims, speculation and speculation, and no real evidence was presented to support this claim. Defendant 1 believes that, at a certain point, Mario Weissman sought to sever the formal contact between him and Marig "and therefore he randomly took the name and details of Sztgagovsky and Forum Office from Uri Resch's papers, which were held in those offices... and noted them as the entities to which he wishes to transfer the ownership and management of Merig to the Registrar of Companies...".
Weissman did these actions without his knowledge and without the approval of defendant 1, and he only became aware of this when the criminal proceedings were opened.
The same Mario Weissman even preceded the transfer of ownership by a period of about nine months, from the date of the actual submission of the documents, while throughout that period the company continued to be managed, operated and controlled by Weissman, with the assistance of Shlomo Matuk.
Defendant 1 further argues that the prosecution did not bring any evidence linking him to the registration of the documents or their submission to the Registrar of Companies, and since he did not have rights or powers in the Merig company, in any case he was not entitled to transfer ownership in a company that was not his own.
As for the statements of defendant 1 in his police interrogation in May 1999, in which he stated that he intended to acquire the Marig company, the defense maintains that the intention was to enter the company as a partner and not to serve as its sole owner. Ultimately, the transaction was not executed, and the defendant did not enter as a partner in Marig, did not acquire it, and never had a share in the company.