The Tax and Economic Prosecutor’s Office has closed a bribery case against Shikun & Binui (TASE: SKBN), a real estate and infrastructure developer. Meanwhile, an indictment was filed today against Shikun & Binui’s subsidiary SBI Infrastructure, as part of a plea deal, charging the company with conspiracy to commit a crime and violating the Securities Act.
In the plea deal, the subsidiary will admit to the charges and will ask to pay a fine of NIS 10 million. In addition, NIS 250 million, which the state has been holding since 2018 from SBI International Holdings AG, a Swiss subsidiary of SBI Infrastructure, will be withheld.
“I am pleased that this long-standing case against the company has been resolved,” said Nati Sedoff, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Shikon & Benoy. “We now look forward to the future with full energy.”
In 2018, a public investigation began into suspicions that payments to public officials in Africa were made using a separate set of accounts and that the payments were not reported in the company’s financial statements. This followed a 2008 amendment to the Israeli criminal law that criminalized bribing a foreign public official to promote business. The investigation ended five years ago, but the decision on whether to file an indictment was long delayed. In 2021, it was decided to close the case against the then-controlling shareholder of Shikun & Bonoy, Shari Arison.
Last December, senior Shikun and Binui executives, including former CEO Ofer Kotler, signed a plea deal with reduced sentences and no jail time. At the same time, the cases against former Shikun and Binui CEO Ravit Barniv, SBI Bank CEO Yehuda Elimelich, and former Shikun and Binui general counsel Hezi Katan were closed. Former Shikun and Binui CEO Moshe Lahmani, Dan Shaham, the Kenyan branch manager of SBI Infrastructure, and Ronnie Baluch, SBI Solel Boneh’s foreign CEO, pleaded guilty and were sentenced to fines, suspended prison sentences, and community service orders.
According to the indictment against the subsidiary, some of the companies affiliated with the Shikun and Benoy Group, before the amendment came into effect, were making payments to people in the countries where they operated, without obtaining receipts, and some of these payments were illegal. These illegal payments, and the profits resulting from them, were recorded in the group’s books.
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Following the amendment, the companies adopted a code of ethics and an enforcement program to implement the code in the countries in which they operate.
Besides, especially till 2012, SBI Infrastructure conspired with the companies not to stop the payments.
This article was published in Globes, Israeli Business News – en.globes.co.il – on July 4, 2024.
© Copyright Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2024.