The defendant does not deny that at the request of the ordering parties, he was an intermediary between them and shipping companies, customs brokers and companies that dealt with the release of goods from the port, and there is nothing wrong with providing such services, within the framework of the defendant's business.
He vehemently denies that he took the goods for himself and that at any point he was the owner or holder of the goods; The physical release of the first container in the framework of the first indictment was an action carried out by Shlomo Sweet and Haim Buchris, Defendant 1 did not become the owner or holder of the goods, and his entire interest in the sale of the goods was to receive the repayment of Buchris's debts to him, and to the other service providers.
In this regard, no weight should be given to the testimony of Haim Buchris, who is a repeat offender, has a clear interest and whose testimony turned out to be unreliable and patently false.
As for the other four containers, their release was carried out without the defendant's knowledge and without his involvement. His entire role was to refer a man named Natan Harpaz to Shlomo Metok, so that he could help him sell the goods. The prosecution's attempt to rely on Harpaz's testimony will not succeed, since he is also a repeat offender, with a clear interest, who gave tendentious and innocent testimony in court, in order to distance himself from any connection to the goods.
Even the reliance on the recording of the words of defendant 2 in his conversation with defendant 3 does not strengthen the prosecution's evidence, since defendant 3 also has a clear interest in harming defendants 1 and 2, in order to extricate himself from responsibility for his actions. In addition, this recording does not meet the rules of technical admissibility of recordings, with Defendant 2 asserting that these are things that were "cooked" and taken out of context.
It was also argued that the words of defendant 2 in the recording are not clear, and it is not possible to conclude from them that the reference is to the goods specified in the first charge.