The Prosecution Case
Testimony of Roni Kofi (transcript of July 13, 2021)
Main Inquiry
- The witness is engaged in framing and roof covering work, and carried out work for the IPS, as a subcontractor, for about 13 or 15 years (p. 205). In the beginning, those who invited him to work were the main contractors. Later he met the defendant, who supervised some of the work that Kofi carried out for the main contractor, and the defendant invited him to carry out the work (pp. 207-208).
- The defendant and Kofi were in direct contact. The witness did not know all the main contractors at all. The defendant told him to carry out the work, to quote the price and to bring him an invoice for that amount. The defendant also gave him the name of the contractor, and told him that the check "will be with you." The defendant forwarded the order to the main contractor (pp. 208-209). 15% of the payment to the witness was transferred to the main contractor (p. 211).
- At a certain point, a contractor named Ja'far (apparently Abu Ja'far – M.B.) contacted the witness, who told him that he was the one who worked with the defendant as a subcontractor, and offered Kofi to work as a third contractor in his place. Kofi accepted his offer and received payment directly from Ja'far (p. 214). At a certain point, the defendant and Ja'far quarreled, the defendant turned to Kofi, and from that point on, Kofi worked with the defendant, under a main contractor (p. 216).
- Kofi understood over time that the defendant used to set excessive sums. For example, if the cost of work was NIS 20,000, the order was NIS 40,000. Kofi noted that this did not interest him and he took into account what he did (p. 212).
- Kofi worked directly with the defendant for about a year, until he carried out work for the defendant in his home and the defendant owed him money and wanted to pay him by way of an addition to the bills. This did not suit Kofi (pp. 217-218). The defendant's private work began about a month after the defendant bought the penthouse on the 14th floor (p. 218). He carried out pergolas there, special painting roofing work and an outdoor kitchen (p. 219). Afterwards, the defendant or his friend bought the apartment on the second floor. Later, a few months later, the defendant told him that he had bought a house that he wanted to turn into a 4-5 unit motel. In the motel, Kofi made wooden pergolas (p. 220). He also did a small job at the defendant's son's house in Bat Yam (pp. 220-221). The total period during which he performed private work for the defendant was 7-8 months (p. 221). As part of the work on the defendant's private properties, four permanent employees worked with Kofi (p. 222).
- The defendant should have paid Kofi NIS 160,000 for the private work he performed for him (each penthouse is about NIS 50,000 or NIS 60,000; two pergolas in a motel, about NIS 30,000 or NIS 40,000 ( 223-224)). Kofi does not have any document documenting this. He relied on the defendant, worked with him on a very large scale, saw his assets and did not imagine that the defendant would not pay him. The defendant still owed him the entire sum (p. 224). He could have sued the defendant, but the loss as a result of such a move was greater than the profit (p. 224).
- When asked how the defendant offered to close the debt for his private work, Kofi replied: "We had a job that had a slightly larger amount of money and he wanted to, he told me to add 20,000 shekels here, take it down, let's offset it. That's it, take out 20,000 shekels. Something like that. Yes, something like that" (p. 225). Kofi came to the defendant's office in Ramla many times, and from time to time asked about the debt, or at least part of it.
During one of the visits to the office, the defendant made the said offer, and Kofi was shocked and refused it (pp. 225-226). Kofi noted that he was unable to write that he had built for NIS 20,000, something that did not exist (p. 226). He also added: "What is it now, let's take 20,000 off me? I also have to steal for the trail, not even to sleep at night, and I also have 10,000 of the 20,000 NIS left" (p. 226). He explained that if he received NIS 20,000, he had to issue an invoice to the main contractor for NIS 20,000 more, he did not have a reference for the materials of the same NIS 20,000, and he also paid 40% tax and 15% to the main contractor. So he gives the main contractor NIS 3,000 as a gift, and he loses from it (p. 227). He has only NIS 10,000 left (p. 228).
- Following a refresher through an interrogation on December 17, 2017, Kofi testified that he felt that the defendant was afraid of the recordings, and therefore wrote sums on a piece of paper ("He would have written a sum ... 10, 000.... He would make a circle with 10,000. I want 10,000 of it" – p. 228). In response, Kofi pretended to not understand the defendant's intention. The defendant's response was to hold Kofi hostage, using entry permits. Instead of issuing him permits for a year, as was done with others, the defendant used to issue him permits for two months, a month or a week (p. 228). The defendant "caught" him using this method for nearly five years. Kofi explained that he understood that the defendant wanted a bribe, and at first deliberately ignored it, until he realized that "it was starting to get stressed." At a certain point, Kofi began to pressure the defendant to return the money he owed him, and then, at that point, the defendant offered him the offset. The two did not reach agreements, and the defendant no longer invited him to carry out work for two or three years (p. 229). The defendant did not agree that Kofi and his team would work under him at the IPS any longer, and he unequivocally informed the contractors of this (p. 229).
Cross-examination
- Kofi had previously served a six-month prison sentence for tax offenses. After his release from prison in 2013, he did not return to work in IPS facilities, nor did he even try to seek the approval of the security officer for this purpose (pp. 231-233). It should be noted that later in the cross-examination, Kofi stated that during the period when he carried out the private work on the defendant's properties, he also worked for the construction body and the employment body of the IPS (more on this below).
- When he worked in IPS facilities, before he went to prison, Kofi served as a foreman and before that also as a subcontractor (p. 234). After his release from prison, he offered his services as a foreman to main contractors with whom he worked in the Ministry of Defense and the IPS (p. 235).
- In his testimony, Kofi referred to the first project in the defendant's penthouse, work that lasted two or three days (p. 237), and to the work in his son's home (pp. 239-241). In addition, he worked in the motel for 4-5 days in installations in the field as well as preparations before that (pp. 241-242). As for the cost of working in the penthouse, according to the witness, such work would cost at least NIS 60,000 (p. 244).
The workers in these jobs were paid according to the hours worked, in pay slips. Kofi does not remember the amount of the payment (p. 248). Yossi Yosefian received a monthly sum because he served as a foreman (p. 249).
- During the police interrogation, he was asked to produce references and invoices for expenses in the various projects. When asked why he did not do so, he replied that he had decided not to transfer the materials and to sue the defendant personally for the debt. To the question of whether he had documents attesting to his expenses on work materials in the penthouse and villa, he replied that it could be reconstructed without difficulty (p. 250). He also added that the price of the work is affected by the height of the apartment (14th floor) (p. 251). The witness confirmed that the cost of the materials in the penthouse, the iron beams and the accommodation together, does not exceed NIS 20,000. To the question of whether the total cost is NIS 120,000, he replied that the total is NIS 140,000 or NIS 160,000 (p. 253). The witness stated that the defendant owed him NIS 140,000 for his work (penthouse, villa, motel). He does not have a calculation regarding the distribution for each project (p. 255).
- The defense attorney referred to a police interrogation, from which he realized that the pergolas in the penthouse cost NIS 120,000, and that an additional NIS 25,000-30,000 cost the pergolas in the villa. The witness replied that this was probably true, and that he did not remember (p. 256). When asked how the materials cost NIS 20,000 while he charged NIS 120,000, the witness replied that he was a very expensive contractor (p. 257). According to him, he used to issue invoices to his clients.
When asked if he was a licensed dealer at the time, it became clear that when he carried out the work for the defendant, Kofi was working for the Shimshon Buchnik company, Alumtris (where he worked for 3-4 years). If the defendant had paid, Alumtaris would have issued the invoice. Kofi was a hired foreman in the same company and received a pay slip every month (p. 258). Kofi performed the private work under Alumtris, who provided the materials for the work (pp. 261-262).
- Between the work in the penthouse and the work in the villa, a considerable period of time passed. Kofi estimated the total period at a year or a year and a half (p. 259). When asked why he went back to doing work for a person who had not paid him a penny, he explained that he was not thinking only of himself, but about the work in the entire system and about his employees and his business. When it was mentioned that Kofi was an employee of Alumtris, he explained that during the said period, when he worked on the defendant's property, he also worked at the same time with the construction body and the body of employment in the IPS (pp. 260-261). As he put it: "We worked continuously in the IPS... perhaps not for Arkady, but in a different body" (p. 261). To the question of whether he worked in the facilities for which the defendant is responsible, he replied: "It is possible that he is, but yes, not that he is responsible for them in terms of supervision. No... We would work in a parallel body, which is construction, which would have done much larger projects" (p. 261). In this framework, he worked with main contractors such as Mahlab and M. Michaeli (p. 261).
- The defense attorney pointed out that each time, during his interrogation with the police, Kofi indicated a different sum that the defendant owed him (NIS 180,000, about NIS 150,000, between NIS 120,000 and NIS 140,000). When asked if it was possible that he was just throwing numbers around, he replied that there was indeed some confusion on the matter, but that he knew for sure that it was between NIS 140,000 and 160,000 (pp. 265-266).
- When asked if he had any record of the private work, he replied that he sat with the defendant "like two men" (p. 265). The witness confirmed that the debt was to Alumtris (p. 268). When asked if there was a signed agreement with Alumtris, he evaded an answer (p. 268).
The money spent to purchase the materials for the penthouse and villa belongs to Alumtris, "from the account that we only worked in prison" (p. 269). In other words, the materials for private construction were purchased as part of the purchase of building materials for the IPS (p. 270). Materials were purchased in huge quantities, and the portion for the defendant is negligible in terms of its scope (p. 271).
- To the question of when and in what manner he pressured the defendant to accept the money he owed him, he replied that he used to meet him 3-4 times a week as part of his work, and the two spoke on the phone every day (pp. 268-269).
- When asked to name contractors who told him that they no longer worked with him, he replied that this was the case with all the contractors he worked with. Kofi mentioned a number of names, mainly after refreshing his memory. On behalf of Mahlab, he was told that he could no longer work for the defendant (pp. 274-276). As to the fact that a number of contractors (Michael David, D.B.S. and M. Michaeli) did not confirm his statements, he replied that factually for three years "he did not give me any work" (p. 277).
- When asked whether what prevented him from continuing to work in the IPS during that period was the fact that he was in prison and therefore the IPS officer did not allow him to enter for a long period of time, and not that the defendant ostracized him, he replied that he worked "5 years later. I had a permanent permit" (p. 278). According to him, while the defendant excluded him, he (the defendant) chose to give him permits for two months at a time (p. 278). However, since he stopped working with the defendant, he has had permanent permits (for about 5-6 years) (p. 279).
- As for the repayment of the defendant's debt, the defendant rejected Kofi time and time again and told him that there was "the one who was abroad" (p. 279), an investor who wanted a house like the defendant's, who would transfer the money to Kofi for the pergola, including the debt, in cash (it is possible that the reference is to zydpods – M.B.). The witness saw that the matter continued and continued and understood that it was a bad debt. When he was offered the first offset, in 2014, he realized that the story about the investor who would transfer the money to him was also a lie (p. 280).
Kofi did not contact the police and did not sue the defendant because he continued to work for the IPS, in the representations of the Construction and Employment Department. When he saw that the defendant was "persecuting" him in construction and employment, even though he still owed him money, he ordered an investigation "about the whole story" (p. 282). Kofi added that he did not have documents to file a lawsuit (p. 283).
- To the question of why Alumtris did not sue the defendant, he replied that he did not know (p. 283). To the question of why he refers in his words to the fact that the defendant owes him and that he could have sued the defendant, when it comes to the defendant's debt to Alumtris, Kofi replied that he is not a simple worker and bears the blame against his employer, who relied on him (p. 284).
Testimony of Yossi Yousefian (transcript of July 13, 2021)