Imprisonment sentences for book cartel convicts – general

Judgment in the Book Cartel Case – The Jerusalem District Court sentenced all textbook cartel convicts to imprisonment. Judge Oded Shaham handed down actual prison sentences to all the convicts involved in the textbook cartel. Last October, the court convicted a number of companies for distributing textbooks and their officers in a series of coordination of tenders by the Ministry of Education and local authorities for the textbook lending project. The sentence in the case was handed down today.

The court sentenced Sigal Habaz, who was a director of a book company, to every sentence of 8 months’ imprisonment behind bars; On Mr. Udi Zluff who was also the director of a book company for every court sentence a sentence of 4 months actual imprisonment; And Rahamim Zluff, the owner of the company, who turned 86, a sentence of 2 months in prison and 2 months of community service.

Mr. Oded Sheffer, the owner and CEO of a science company, was sentenced to six months in prison behind bars.

Mr. Shai Cohen, a manager at the company Has Distributions, was sentenced to five months in prison. And Mr. Moshe Cohen, the CEO and owner of the company Has Distributions was sentenced to 75 days in prison.
Along with the prison sentences, the defendants and the companies were fined tens and hundreds of thousands of new shekels.

The textbook lending project is designed to help lower the price of textbooks in Israel, make schooling accessible to those whose families do not have the financial capacity to purchase textbooks, reduce social disparities and increase equality of opportunity by reducing private household spending on education in the weaker sections.

The coordination of tenders included six cases over five years, in which the directors of the companies and their officers coordinated bids for tenders in several cases and in other cases the boycott of tenders, all in order to maximize their profits at the public expense.

In the ruling, the court ruled that this was a systematic and extensive coordination with respect to dozens of schools, and that the potential damage from the coordination was very great because the tender was intended for all schools in the country that wanted to participate in the textbook lending project. Due to the acts and systematic fraud, the defendants were also convicted of the offense of receiving anything fraudulently under aggravated circumstances.

The Competition Authority’s investigation began in 2013, and included arrests of some of those involved.