Third, in other places, Oshri testified that for various reasons (which we will refer to below) Harel was not a relevant player who could compete with Balam Indra and that Harel had no chance (e.g., p. 4474, paras. 8-13). However, insofar as this is the case, this undermines the argument that in real time, when he saw the coordination correspondence, Oshri believed that it was a purchase offer of equipment for Harel and not the price quote that Harel should submit to ELTA. After all, if Harel doesn't stand a chance, why should she purchase equipment for the purpose of submitting a bid?
Fourth, Oshri's statement in his testimony that he believed that the correspondence and the offers attached to them revolved around procurement between suppliers, i.e., an offer that Harel would purchase equipment for the purpose of participating in Balam Indra, are inconsistent with another explanation he gave in his interrogation with the Competition Authority according to which it was a price quote from Harel to Elta, but rather that it was a fictitious price quote that was given in his assessment at the request of the customer-Elta (P/216, S. 330-337). As he was asked about this in his testimony, Oshri's answers were not sufficient to unravel the question marks (see the course of the investigation, p. 4864, paras. 1 ff.).
- The bottom line: Oshri's explanation of the correspondence from real time should not be accepted. This is an explanation that was born in retrospect in an attempt to legitimize the coordination correspondence.
- For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that Wei and Oshri raised in their summaries general arguments regarding Oshri in relation to the indictment in question, as well as to other charges (e.g., paragraphs 106-128 of the summaries). This included the claim that Oshri was a man of competition, which was his policy and business outlook, because he pushed Wei to compete all the time (e.g., p. 4474, s. 21, p. 4315, s. 27); that, unlike the managers of other companies, he had technological knowledge and competed by offering technological solutions, and saw the other companies as inferior "iron" companies that move "boxes" from side to side (p. 4270, s. 1-8, p. 4271, s. 1-13, p. 4309, s. 10-19, p. 4279, s. 14-20); and that Oshri led to the fact that the project managers and the manufacturers' representatives wanted to work with Wei (e.g., Kandelstein of IAI, p. 735, paras. 19-20). It was further emphasized that Oshri and Nahum were in conflict and did not exchange a word (p. 4272, paras. 10-23) and that, as a rule, Oshri did not have professional interfaces with Zeiger (p. 4310, paras. 15-23). However, these general arguments do not detract from the clear conclusion that arises from the evidence presented above, according to which Oshri was a party to the coordination correspondence from a real time, and that he was a party to the arrangement and a partner in it.
Zeiger's involvement as a party to the settlementin an explanation that was born retroactively in an attempt to legalize the coordination correspondence.
- As stated above, it was proven that at the beginning of May 2009 or thereabouts, the first indictment was made between the three companies, in which they agreed, inter alia, to allow any of the companies to win civil appeal projects by submitting high bids by the other companies. The arrangement was made at a meeting in which Zeiger was a senior participant and which was held in Harel.
- We have also seen that the arrangement for the coordination of the proposals in Balam Indra was made in continuation of the said arrangement, as explicitly stated in the correspondence "pursuant to the summary of the attached prices for Elta" (P/289); Immediately afterwards, Naveh was also added to the correspondence, so that all the participants in the meeting in Harel - Zeiger, Gilad, Shahar and Naveh - became direct partners in the coordination.
- Zeiger, who, as stated above, was a party to the settlement of the first indictment - he participated in the meeting and received the email message with the summary afterwards (P/1) - was a direct party to the first e-mail correspondence for coordination with Indra, which was replaced on 20 October 2009. Shahar sent Zeiger as a direct correspondent the e-mail to which he attached Harel's price table to Elta, stating, as stated, that this was done "in continuation of the summary" (P/289); Gilad wrote to Zeiger directly on the email, in which he asked, "Why doesn't Yaakov write?" (P/377) and Zeiger was also writing about Shahar's response message that he attached Naveh to the correspondence and once again sent the "Harel Prices to Indra" (P/17).
- Zeiger was therefore a direct party to the correspondence that was the basis for the arrangement for the coordination of proposals to Balam Indra, which was made following the meeting and the settlement of the first indictment in which he took part. This is sufficient to lead to the conclusion that Zeiger was a party to the settlement of the second indictment.
- The main argument raised by Zeiger is that he received a great many e-mails every day, that he did not open or read all of them, and that he did not remember reading the aforementioned e-mails (e.g., P/223, paras. 73-75; p. 5392, paras. 6-8, where he testified that he did not remember seeing or opening the e-mails; p. 5888, paras. 7-8, There he testified that most likely he had not read and that he did not remember with certainty).
- However, Zeiger's claim was a minefield. The impression that arose from his testimony on this matter was that he was raising every possible argument in an attempt to distance himself from the coordination correspondence to which he was a party.
- Zeiger testified that he tries to open most of the emails addressed directly to him (p. 5285, paras. 7-8). His testimony showed that he entered all the e-mails that reached him, but he claimed that when he saw that it was a message about which he was writing only in a copy - and not as the person to whom the message was addressed directly - he "moved on" (p. 5285, paras. 6-23). However, in our case, Shahar sent the coordination notice directly to Zeiger, and not as a copy of the copy, and Gilad did the same in response. In other words, according to Zeiger himself, these are messages of the kind he read.
- In addition, according to Zeiger, an e-mail message from a competitor to or to Gilad was an exception, in his words: "very, very, very unusual" (p. 5587, s. 12 - p. 5588, s. 3). It is even more difficult to accept his claim that he "moved on" and did not read correspondence that was addressed directly to him and which, according to him, were unusual.
- In an attempt to support his claim that he apparently did not read the complicated e-mail correspondence, Zeiger explained, among other things, that the equipment required by Balam Indra was such that Harel did not deal with it. This claim raised the question of how Zeiger could have known in real time that it was equipment that Harel was not dealing with without reading the emails. When asked about this by the court, he replied that "it is possible that I looked but did not delve deeply..." (p. 5888, paras. 22-23; See also his testimony later that when it comes to an e-mail message from a competitor, "I may be opening but I am traveling, moving on", p. 5892, paras. 9-10). This undermines Zeiger's claim that he did not read the emails. When he noticed the details of the equipment attached to the e-mail message, this in any case indicates that he actually read the contents of the correspondence and was aware of what was said in them. Moreover, this is not a long or complex correspondence that requires delving into it in order to understand or internalize it. Lev Lava - a summary of prices for Elta in Balam Indra - immediately stands out in the front row.
- As stated above, the impression that arose from Zeiger's testimony and the answers he gave in his interrogation with the Authority was that he was trying to distance himself from the email correspondence to which he was a party.
For example, when he was shown in his interrogation at the PA that he was a party to the follow-up correspondence in which Naveh was added to the correspondence at Gilad's request, he claimed that he did not know who Naveh was: "I don't know who Yaakov is. Now I see according to the email Yaakov from Triple C. I don't know who he is" and reiterated that he did not know Naveh (P/223, paras. 98-105). This is a difficult conduct. Naveh participated in the first indictment meeting that took place in Harel and in which Zeiger participated. Zeiger himself testified that this was a meeting with competitors that was not routine but rather unusual (p. 5816, paras. 7-9). In his previous interrogation at the Competition Authority, when he was asked about the arrangement that was the subject of the first indictment, Zeiger referred to Naveh in a way that testified that he knew who he was and what his role was (P/222, Q. 655, Q. 778-779), and when he was presented with what Naveh had said in relation to the first charge, he replied as if he knew very well who Naveh was: "Yaakov Naveh invents the story that Yaakov Naveh was disgracefully expelled from Triple C" (P/222, S. 719-722, even if, as Naveh claims, he first met Zeiger at the meeting that is the subject of the first indictment, p. 70, paras. 21-23). And now, when he was presented to Sieger in his interrogation in the continuation of the complicated e-mail correspondence regarding Balam Indra, he tried to distance himself once again, claiming that he did not know Naveh. The difficulty that arises is clear (and this is also when we take into account that between the two interrogations in the Authority, P/222 and P/223, a period of about a year and a half passed). When asked about this in his testimony, Sieger did not have satisfactory answers (p. 5894, para. 25 - p. 5897, para. 2).