Albar Convicted in Parallel Import Fraud and Smuggling Case

The Tel Aviv District Court has convicted the leasing company Albar, after it admitted to a long list of offenses including tax violations, smuggling, forgery, and obtaining something by fraud. The conviction came as part of a plea agreement in which the Tax and Economic Prosecution and the company will jointly ask the court to impose a significant fine of 18 million shekels.

According to the amended indictment, the case began in 2013, when Albar sought to enter Israel’s parallel car import market. To obtain the parallel importer permit and the required import licenses from the Transportation Ministry, the company and others involved submitted false documents and agreements that created a misleading impression that Albar met the legal threshold requirements. On that basis, the company fraudulently received the operating licenses.

Using those licenses, Albar imported 1,828 vehicles into Israel worth more than 176 million shekels. The indictment says the company used forged sales invoices and false certificates of origin to present the imports as lawful and to secure various tax benefits. Customs received about 1,600 false import declarations with misleading details, which reduced the reported purchase costs by more than 4 million shekels compared with the real costs, and the company also made false entries in its books to hide the source of the funds.

The court convicted Albar of fraud, smuggling, customs offenses, VAT offenses, use of a forged document, filing false import declarations, evading import taxes, and false corporate bookkeeping. The prosecution said the requested fine would be a meaningful financial punishment that serves the public interest and reflects the company’s acceptance of responsibility for acts carried out by senior company officials. The case against the other defendants and participants is still ongoing, following a joint investigation by Customs and VAT investigators in Haifa and the Israel Police’s Hof District investigative unit.