Hapoel Tel Aviv Owner Ofer Yannay Sues Top Basketball Referees’ Officials for Defamation

Hapoel Tel Aviv owner Ofer Yannay said Tuesday night that he filed a defamation lawsuit in Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court for 1,170,351 shekels against two senior figures in the Israel Basketball Association’s refereeing system, Assaf Shalem, chairman of the referees association, and Moshe Biton, chairman of its professional committee. The lawsuit was served on the defendants Wednesday afternoon, just hours before the start of the finals series.

According to the complaint, filed through the Meitar law firm, the two abused their public positions and led a coordinated media campaign of defamation and delegitimization against Yannay. It alleges the campaign was intended to damage his business and public reputation and to exert improper and illegal pressure on referees on the court to act harshly against him.

Yannay’s filing cites several statements he says harmed him. Biton allegedly called him “mentally ill” and unstable in an audio recording aired on Army Radio, using phrases such as “the man is not sane, not sane and not cooked.” Shalem, the suit says, gave a series of media interviews portraying Yannay as a criminal using “Mafia-like” tactics, falsely claiming he had an agenda and a plan to “deal with the referees association” and that this was supposedly why he entered basketball.

The suit also says Shalem publicly called for Yannay to be barred from arenas, which it describes as unprecedented interference and incitement. It argues that the referees association is a quasi-judicial body that must remain fully objective, but that the officials’ remarks created heavy pressure on subordinate referees and led to disproportionate sanctions against Yannay, including a live stoppage of a State Cup quarterfinal so he could be removed over a request for a phone charger. The complaint says the severity of the punishment was also criticized by the Israeli Basketball Premier League administration and by the disciplinary court itself.

Because, Yannay says, Shalem has refused to apologize personally and because a previous apology from the association was used to continue attacking him, he is seeking statutory double damages for seven separate publications, six attributed to Shalem and one to Biton, plus a court order requiring a public apology in wording set by the court. No responses had been published by the time of reporting.