In the first stage, the goods that were in the first container were released, using the original bill of lading, and after the arrival of the additional four containers, the goods were released using gate certificates, which according to the prosecution the defendant forged, since there is no dispute that these certificates were not issued by the ship's agent, Carmel Shipping Services Ltd.
The first question that I have to decide is whether the letter of credit was drafted by defendant 1 with the intention of preventing the opening bank from honoring it, both because of the operative conditions and because of additional reservations that were included in it.
The prosecution claims that the fraudulent acts committed by the defendant began by creating a false representation towards the supplier as if it were an order for a legitimate commercial company, while these were shell companies without any business activity, and all this with the intention of taking the goods, without bearing any financial responsibility. It was further claimed that the letter of credit was opened without any intention of paying the consideration appearing therein, by way of formulating reservations and conditions in the letter, which would ensure that the letter of credit would not be repaid.
In this argument, the prosecution relies on the testimony of Aaron Calderon, who opened the letter of credit in the bank account of Lantex Trade (1992) Ltd., which he owned. According to him, defendant 1 assured him that he would not be exposed to the repayment of the letter of credit, due to the existence of various reservations that would not be removed. The prosecution learns of this intention of defendant 1 from the very fact that he refused to remove the reservations, even after the supplier offered a discount of up to 40% of the agreed price. In addition, the prosecution learned about the previous conduct of defendant 1, within the framework of method and similar acts, from the testimony of Alon Granot and Elhanan Tenenbaum.