Agrexco liquidators appeal ruling that rejected huge claim against EY Israel
The Supreme Court will now decide the fate of a major damages lawsuit filed by Agrexco’s liquidators against Kost Forer Gabbay Kassierer, EY Israel, after the Tel Aviv District Court dismissed the case in February. The liquidators, attorney Shlomo Nasse and accountant Eli Shפלer, filed the appeal today, challenging a ruling that rejected their claim over alleged audit failures in Agrexco’s financial statements from 2007 to 2009.
Agrexco, founded in 1956, spent more than half a century exporting and marketing Israeli agricultural produce abroad and was entirely state-controlled throughout its existence. The liquidators say that in mid-2011, just two weeks after the publication of audited annual reports, the company sought an urgent stay of proceedings and later collapsed, leaving debts of hundreds of millions of shekels with no assets to repay them.
The appeal, prepared by lawyers Yair Leibowitz and Shahar Dekel of B. Levinbook & Co. together with Dr. Shlomo Nasse, argues that leaving the ruling in place would empty auditors’ liability of meaning and create an economically untenable legal reality. They say the district court itself detailed numerous failures by EY and found the accounts were incorrect, yet still concluded there was no negligence.
EY, through attorneys Yaron Kostelitz and Daniel Rozenblum of Kostelitz & Co., denied the allegations and said no negligence, professional breach, or departure from auditing standards was proven. It argued that the financial statements were Agrexco’s own documents, prepared and signed by the company’s management, and that the auditor’s role is limited to reviewing them, not setting business or accounting policy. The appeal challenges Judge Magen Altovia’s 84-page judgment, after the Supreme Court in 2023 had already overturned a 2022 move to strike the case and sent it back for full factual hearings. Following evidence and expert testimony, the district court held in February 2026 that no breach was shown and that the state companies authority had not objected at the time to the accounting treatment.
