- 16 oct 1999
Ultra Orthodox Jews Running Drug Empire
By Deborah Camiel
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Ultra-Orthodox Jews served as couriers for a major international drugs ring that operated in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Israel and the United States, Israeli police said Tuesday.
The syndicate, led by two Israelis living in Europe, was one of the world's largest producers of the synthetic drug ecstasy, police said.
Updating arrest figures announced by Dutch police Monday after dawn raids on the ring's drug laboratories in the Netherlands, Israeli police said at a news conference that 41 suspects had been detained overseas and another eight in Israel.
"The couriers were young Americans and Israelis, most of them ultra-Orthodox Jews," an Israeli police spokesman said. He declined to say whether they wore traditional black garb on their smuggling runs.
About one million ecstasy tablets were seized by police in Israel and abroad, the spokesman said.
Twenty-four Israelis, most of them living overseas, were among those arrested.
Two Israelis, one residing in the Netherlands and the other in Belgium, were the masterminds behind the operation, and an ultra-Orthodox man recruited young religious Jews to smuggle the drugs. All three are in custody, Israeli police said.
Dutch police said Monday's raids on 35 addresses in the Netherlands and the Belgium city of Antwerp marked the culmination of a three-year investigation.
Along with laboratory equipment used in making synthetic drugs, five kilograms (11 lbs) of Semtex high explosive as well as weapons, cars and money were also recovered, a Dutch police spokeswoman said.
Israeli police said an Israeli undercover agent had been key to busting the ring.
The agent, who appeared at the Jerusalem news conference disguised with a wig and false mustache, managed to buy 60,000 ecstasy tablets from the main suspect in the investigation during 10 months of undercover work in the Netherlands, police said.
14 sep 2012, 17:02 , Respect -
Maria 7 mei 2002
Israeli Drug Smugglers' Global Monopoly On Ecstasy
By Samuel M. Katz MomentMag.com
ISRAEL has long been known for its wholesome Carmel oranges and leather sandals. Today, however, their main trade is in the virtual monopoly on the global trade of Ecstasy.
It is a muggy summer's Saturday night in Tel Aviv, and throngs of young people have gathered outside Allenby 58, one of the city's hottest nightspots. Many are on weekend leave from the army; the young men sport Levis and Polo shirts, but their military crewcuts give them away. They smoke with the fervor of condemned prisoners. Some cruise up and down the seedy thoroughfare, talking on their cellular phones. Outside the club, a young woman dressed in a red tank top and short black skirt sits on the hood of a white Subaru, a half-smoked Marlboro dangling from her lips. "When are you going to be here?" she shouts into her pelephone, as Israelis call it. "Remember to bring the 'X'!"
'X' is XTC, or Ecstasy, the newly fashionable and illicit mind-altering drug with a reputation for suppressing inhibitions. Inside the crowded disco, amid the earsplitting sounds of Europop and hip-hop, little pink pills of "X" are freely consumed-contributing to a wild sense of abandon.
Tel Aviv, Israel's jewel on the Mediterranean, may at first glance seem an unlikely setting for the kinds of vices that plague American and European cities. In Israel, where young men and women are required to serve in the army, citizenship has traditionally meant sacrifice and self-discipline. Drug abuse and related crimes have been considered byproducts of affluent nations, spoiled by wealth and comfort.
But Ecstasy, along with marijuana, hashish, heroin, and cocaine, is heavily used and traded in Israel today, in what some call a sign of the times. Contemporary Israel is an affluent, drug-consuming country-with an estimated 300,000 casual drug users and some 20,000 junkies. There are no reliable statistics on Ecstasy use in Israel, but in 2000 alone, police confiscated 270,000 Ecstasy tablets from smugglers, students, and partygoers in a series of stings. That same year, according to an online report by the Israeli Authority for Combating Drugs, Israeli agents confiscated more than 80 kilograms of heroin, 30 kilograms of hashish, 8,885 kilograms of marijuana, and nearly 8,000 "sheets" (resembling sheets of postage stamps) of LSD. Those numbers may pale beside comparable statistics for the United States where, according to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimates, more than 15 million junkies reside. But they add up to serious drug problems, especially among Israeli youth-and have led to commando-style raids in tree-lined residential neighborhoods of Jerusalem, Haifa, and Tel Aviv. According to a report of the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, 75 percent of all crime in Israel is drug-related. And, compounding Israel's worries, the drug trade has led to troubling breaches of Israel's borders with Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan.
According to a U.S. State Department White Paper on Global Narcotics, issued in 1998, the Jewish State is "a drug-consuming country with serious marijuana, hashish and heroin use, and a growing problem of cocaine, LSD, and amphetamine consumption." But perhaps more striking, the report found that Israel is "no longer just a user nation, but like Colombia, Thailand and Pakistan, it has also now become a trafficking power." Authorities say Israeli crime groups have for several years had a virtual monopoly on global distribution of Ecstasy (though police say Russians are also major players, and Colombian and Dominican groups, realizing the potential for profits, are gaining ground.)
On May 3, 10 Israelis, including haredim, were arrested as members of a four-nation smuggling ring that allegedly sent hundreds of thousands of Ecstasy pills from the Netherlands to the United States, through Israel and Canada. Then a few weeks later, police in Spain announced they had captured Israeli Oded Tuito, described as a major international Ecstasy smuggler. Tuito was wanted in the United States for allegedly heading an organization that channeled hundreds of thousands of Ecstasy pills into the country from northern Europe. (At the time of this writing, extradition to the United States was still pending.)
At the end of May, Sammy the Bull (Salvatore Gravano), the one-time underboss of the Gambino family and allegedly the head of La Cosa Nostra in the southwest, pleaded guilty to running a multi-million-dollar Ecstasy ring in Arizona. According to the New York Times, the ring purchased Ecstasy pills "from a man named Ilan Zarger, a drug supplier based in Brooklyn who has ties to the Israeli mob." The United States government had managed to recruit "at least seven secret informants within the Zarger organization." Busts like this, some say, represent a fulfillment of Israeli patriarch David Ben Gurion's famous prediction: "When Israel has prostitutes and thieves we'll be a state just like any other." Ideally Suited Drug Traders?
According to a U.N. study, illicit drugs were virtually nonexistent in Israel until 1967. They became available only after the Six-Day War, when Israelis suddenly found themselves in contact with East Jerusalem Arabs, who had access to the extensive cannabis plantations of Lebanon and Syria. Hashish was suddenly cheap and available. After the war, tens of thousands of tourists from around the world came to Israel, among them young people from high schools and colleges in North America and Europe. They volunteered on kibbutzim and toured the new "greater Israel"-in the process, turning curious Israelis on to drugs. By the mid-1970s, some of Israel's most popular musical stars were rumored to have experimented with heroin, cocaine, and hashish.
The links between Israeli narcotics importers and Lebanese brokers were strengthened after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Lebanon has always been a major source of narcotics flowing to Europe and the United States. The poppy fields of the Beka'a Valley supplied manufacturers in Sicily and Marseilles with the raw product needed to produce heroin, and a considerable part of the Lebanese economy is based on the export of poppy products from the ports of Tyre, Beirut, and Tripoli.
According to a Jordanian intelligence officer who works counter-narcotics, "Israeli soldiers marched into Lebanon like liberating heroes-and smuggling arrangements and routes were established" soon afterward. Security along Israel's northern border with Lebanon was subsequently beefed up, but "the Lebanese Border is a porous, poorly defined series of fences, hills and wadis," according to Border Guard Superintendent "Nachum," a veteran of the frontier, whose identity (as with others quoted in this story) is withheld for security reasons. "There are spots where the Lebanese border is higher than the Israeli side of the fence. Deals are made between Israelis and Lebanese by the buyer tossing a wad of cash across the fence, followed by the seller throwing the bag of drugs," he explained during a patrol of the border area near Kibbutz Sassa. "For years our focus was stopping terrorists from crossing the border, not bags of dope."
"The border is far from hermetic," a former border guard told me. Much of the heroin and hashish passing from Lebanon to Israel goes through the Allewite border village of Raja'ar, just north of Kibbutz Dan, and villages like it.
When the Syrians assumed de facto control of Lebanon, they too reaped enormous profits from the drug trade. By 1996, Syria had become a "major transit country for hashish leaving Lebanon and for opium and morphine entering Lebanon from Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey" on their way to Europe and the United States, according to 1997 and 1998 U.S. State Department reports on international narcotics control. "Dealing drugs [was] Syrian state policy," according to a bluntly worded 1992 report by the Washington-based Center for Security Policy. "Syria's role in the international drug business goes far beyond a few corrupt officials facilitating drug production and trans-shipment in Lebanon," it said. "It is a multibillion-dollar, hard currency-earning operation. The contribution Syria is making to the U.S. illicit drug supply in particular is staggering. According to a DEA estimate, 20 percent of the heroin found in the United States is coming from Syria and Syrian-controlled Lebanon." In Israel, there is enormous potential for profit. A kilogram of poppies costs approximately $7,000 in the Beka'a Valley. By the time it gets to Beirut and is turned into heroin, its value has doubled to nearly $15,000, according to an article by Shlomoh Avromovitch in Ma'ariv. By the time it reaches the Israeli border, its value is nearly $40,000. By the time Israeli gangs have made their buy, the price of the kilogram has doubled yet again. Eventually, what was once a $7,000 kilo of Lebanese poppies becomes $600,000-plus worth of street-ready heroin.
Drug smuggling along Israel's border with Egypt is also robust. Bedouin caravans, moving everything from cigarettes to Russian prostitutes, know where Israeli Defense Force patrols are lax. In some places, the Bedouin and their counterparts in Israeli organized crime have built sophisticated underground tunnels to smuggle contraband. The IDF blows these tunnels up once they are uncovered (so that they can not be used by terrorists), but newer and more elaborate tunnels simply spring up to take their place. Until the recent intifada, smuggling was so brazen, Border Guard narcotics officers say, that Bedouin would simply drive jeeps filled with laundry bags of marijuana from the Sinai across the border to Israel. Israel's counter-narcotics efforts have sparked the interest of police departments worldwide, but according to one NYPD detective working major organized crime cases in New York City, "Israeli law enforcement has been a day late and a dollar short in gearing itself up for the war against drugs."
So how did organized Israeli crime rings become so adept at distributing and marketing Ecstasy globally? According to Antwerp police, Israelis have had smuggling networks in place for years: They shipped stolen diamonds through Brussels and Amsterdam to points worldwide. When a few small-time dealers first came across Ecstasy, and when those dealers successfully test-marketed the drug in Israel, they were able to tap into the existing diamond routes, authorities say.
From there, the smuggling took on a life of its own, in part because Israel has lax banking laws, making it easy to launder money. But experts also say it has to do with the nature of Israeli society. "Israelis are industrious, intelligent, innovative, and they love to travel," says a U.S. law enforcement special agent who works criminal cases involving Israel. "They are ideally suited for the global drug trade." They were the first, authorities point out, to realize the criminal potential for this drug as a "benign" narcotic they could sell and market. It didn't have to be smoked, snorted or injected; and it didn't leave track marks or expose the user to risk of HIV infection. That was the "genius," authorities say, of the Israeli involvement.
The 'Love Drug'
In a country that embraces the charms of Western luxury with singular zeal, few fads have hit with the ferocity of Ecstasy, the street name for MDMA, or Methylenedioxymethamphetamine, a synthetic psychoactive drug with stimulant and hallucinogenic properties. Combining chemical variations of the stimulant amphetamine or methamphetamine with a hallucinogen, most often mescaline, MDMA was first synthesized in 1912 by a German company as an appetite suppressant. In the late 1970s, its euphoric properties led psychiatrists to prescribe "the love drug" for married couples trying to rekindle romantic feelings. Taken orally, usually in tablet form, the drug is said to produce profoundly positive feelings, including empathy for others. Users say it warms and profoundly relaxes them, suppressing anxiety-as well as the need to eat, drink, or sleep-for up to six hours, enabling them to endure two-to-three-day parties. Illicit use did not become popular until the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it began showing up at dance clubs in the United States, Europe, and Israel. Israeli entrepreneurs sometimes provided free samples as a marketing ploy. Ecstasy's popularity may be partly explained by the fact that it is apparently not as addictive (or at $25 to $40 a pill, as expensive) as heroin or cocaine. Users have touted it as "harmless"; it is produced in benign and pleasing colors, such as green and pink, and is often stamped with hearts, four-leaf clovers, or even Stars of David. But experts say the "harmless" image is simply not real: The drug can cause nausea, hallucinations, blurred vision, muscle cramping and, in severe cases, seizures, loss of consciousness, and death.
The young men and women consuming Ecstasy in clubs in Tel Aviv and other parts of the country represent a new breed of Israeli, raised on the pursuit of pleasures glimpsed in shopping malls or on cable TV, rather than on an ethos of self-sacrifice and the greater Zionist good. "There is fatal desperation inside Israel that makes it understandable, almost acceptable, for a youngster to take a drug like Ecstasy," says a former U.S. law enforcement official who worked in Israel for four years. "Look at this place. A lot of 18- and 19-year-olds have cellular phones and nice cars, they are raised on MTV and Hollywood, but instead of drinking on campus to pass on to adulthood they are manning roadblocks and taking fire. Their news is filled with reports of killings, corruption, and rabbinical edicts-all bricks in a wall that threaten their ultimate hopes of living a Middle Eastern version of the American dream. If you were young in this country, and had money, wouldn't you take a drug like Ecstasy? What's surprising to me is the fact that everyone here isn't hooked [on] the pill."
Since its first appearance in the 1990s in Tel Aviv's bohemian Schenken Street and "Florentine" neighborhoods, Ecstasy spread rapidly to discos and popular hotspots. "Israeli kids embraced the warm, feel-good sensation they got from the drug," said a Tel Aviv cop, "and it didn't have to be injected or snorted." Possession of Ecstasy is a felony in Israel with penalties of up to 20 years in prison. But as the Jerusalem Post has reported, Israeli law-enforcement officials tend to target the dealers, leaving the weekend rave parties alone.
Israeli dealers are not content only with local distribution, however. Working with Dutch and Belgian criminal connections, they were instrumental in marketing the drug and creating the demand in Europe and throughout the world, according to DEA agents working in Europe. They used Western Europe as a hub to distribute Ecstasy globally, since the pill-making technology and the chemicals required to make the drug could easily be found in the Netherlands and Belgium. With their existing smuggling networks, the Israelis easily "flooded the market in Europe, in Israel, and in the United States," according to a federal U.S. law enforcement official in the Netherlands, "and once the customers asked for more, you could almost print the money yourself."
The Ecstasy profits are enormous. It costs 15 to 25 cents to produce one Ecstasy tablet, which wholesalers will sell for $2 a pill. Distributors sell it for $10 to $15 a pill, and by the time a drug dealer sells it at a disco or on a college campus, it can fetch between $25 and $40. Thus, a $100,000 investment by an organized crime group can, in a matter of weeks, earn more than $5 million. Labs can manufacture some 100,000 tablets in a few days. Ecstasy is produced primarily in Dutch and Belgian labs-ranging from industrial-sized plants and mobile labs hidden inside trucks or on floating barges, to basements underneath farms and factories. In the past year, about 50 labs were dismantled by police in Holland and Belgium, but they keep springing up in new locations, DEA agents in Belgium say.
Packaged pills are sent overseas through a variety of methods. Air parcel companies, such as FedEx and UPS, are among the most popular. Israeli dispatchers will drive through Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, stopping off to ship their packages, according to drug task force detectives in New York. "The Israelis are veterans. Some served in elite units and intelligence units," said a New York narcotics agent. "They know all the tricks of surveillance and counter-surveillance. They are very hard to catch." Law enforcement, however, is slowly denting this pipeline. On April 5, 2000, U.S. federal agents intercepted two 40-pound FedEx packages of Ecstasy, that, according to the Boston Globe, had been shipped to hotel rooms in Boston and Brookline, Mass. The recipients, Yaniv Yona and Ereza Abutbul, were Israelis.
A few months later, U.S. Customs officials in Los Angeles seized Ecstasy shipments of 650,000 and 2.1 million tablets, respectively, on flights from Paris; agents in upstate New York seized 100,000 pills that had been transported across the St. Lawrence River from Canada. In 2000, DEA and Customs agents seized 11.1 million doses of the drug (up from a few hundred thousand in 1995). The United States also beefed up penalties a few months ago, tripling the potential jail terms for dealers caught with 800 or more pills to at least five years and three months; those caught with 8,000 or more would serve at least 10 years if convicted. DEA agents and detectives say Israelis have been involved in almost all the major busts. They have included Sean Erez, currently awaiting extradition from the Netherlands; Shimon Levita, a New York yeshiva student who was sentenced to 30 months in a federal boot camp for participating in the ring allegedly run by Erez; and Jacob Orgad, identified as an Israeli national with operations in Texas, New York, Florida, California, and Paris. A man identified by Customs as head of one of the biggest "drug importation rings," Israeli Tamer Adel Ibrahim, remains at large.
New York and Miami (with considerable Israeli populations) are major transit points for the drug. The Tel Aviv-to-Antwerp-to-Amsterdam-to-New York City route is a classic smuggler's path, says a Belgian police officer. But with law enforcement lately scrutinizing arrivals at JFK and Newark airport more closely, Ecstasy distributors are now focusing on Los Angeles and the West Coast, where indigenous Israeli communities also exist and demand is high.
The Israeli Ecstasy rings have mainly used Israelis (sometimes unwittingly) as "mules," or couriers, to bring the drug into the United States. Israeli nationals living in Europe and the United States, typically young and seeking some easy cash, make ideal couriers. They don't fit the image of a Colombian cocaine smuggler and they don't usually arrive en masse. Still, according to Dan Rospond, a DEA agent working in the Netherlands, "smuggling rings will often 'shotgun' couriers on flights from Europe-either sending a bunch on the same flight or splitting them among several flights and airlines [to] the same destinations. If two or three are caught, half a dozen still get through."
"Nobody suspects nice Jewish kids [of] being dope smugglers," says a former NYPD detective in the Manhattan District Attorney's office, "especially Orthodox Jews."
Perhaps that's why Erez used Orthodox and Hasidic Jews from the New York area to smuggle Ecstasy into New York's major airports in 1999 and 2000. Young Hasidic couriers typically took 30,000 to 45,000 Ecstasy pills into the United States on each trip, according to a report by David Lefer in the New York Daily News, sometimes carrying as much as $500,000 in drug proceeds back to Erez, in Amsterdam. Offering $200 finder's fees, the drug rings were able to infiltrate yeshivas and rabbinical seminaries, and recruit individuals who looked innocent enough to pass through customs without suspicion. In the insular Orthodox communities of Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Monsey, north of New York City, recruiters found gullible youngsters who thought they would be smuggling diamonds, not narcotics. The reach of the Israeli syndicate is truly global. In September 2000, Japanese police arrested Israeli David Biton on a charge of smuggling 25,000 Ecstasy tablets into Japan. "Ecstasy is to the new century what crack was to the 1980s," said the DEA's Rospond, and Israel has its finger on the trigger.
Although Israeli groups have dominated the Ecstasy trade for about a decade, profit margins are so enormous that organized crime groups from other countries are now attempting to muscle in on the market, an officer explains. "The Israelis are not about to allow the Albanians, the Serbs, the Poles, the Chechens, the Nigerians, the Dominicans, or even the Colombians to take away their profits," says an undercover narcotics detective. "There will be violence. There will be bloodshed and we have to be ready."
In Israel, and indeed around the world, a new day is dawning in the consumption and trafficking of a narcotic that resists control. And at New York's JFK International Airport, a new day dawns for a small army of Immigration and Naturalization Service and Customs officers awaiting the arrival of El Al Flight 001-the first of many daily El Al flights from Israel. For years, customs agents paid little attention to El Al flights, but now, moments before 6 a.m., they are ready, waiting. They've got their work cut out for them.
"Pick the nice Jewish boy out of a crowd of nice Jewish boys," says a veteran Customs inspector as he watches the 400-plus passengers search for their luggage. "It is the needle in the proverbial haystack."
14 sep 2012, 17:02 , Respect -
Maria 9 oct 2002
Three Israelis accused in New York of Ecstasy smuggle
NEW YORK, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Three Israeli nationals were arrested and accused of trying to smuggle $42 million worth of hallucinogenic Ecstasy pills to the United States from Belgium, the largest such drug seizure ever in Europe, U.S. authorities said on Wednesday.
The three men tried to smuggle 1.4 million pills inside diamond polishing tables bound for New York by ship from Antwerp, according to a statement from the office of Roslynn Mauskopf, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Tipped off by witnesses who saw two of the men stuffing the pills into three tables inside an Antwerp warehouse in August, authorities allowed the tables to be delivered -- without the pills -- to New York where they were put under surveillance.
The three men were arrested on Tuesday as they were retrieving the tables and trying to deliver the drugs to a buyer, the statement said. The case marks the largest Ecstasy seizure in Europe and the third largest such seizure in the United States, with a wholesale value of about $14 million and a retail value of about $42 million, officials said.
Arrested were Nachshow Sinvanni, who allegedly wanted to buy 900,000 of the pills for distribution; and Ofir Lebar and Ofir Weizman, who were spotted packing the tables with drugs in Belgium, officials said.
All three men live in Israel, authorities said. They each were charged with conspiring to import MDMA, the technical name for Ecstasy and, if convicted, face a possible prison sentence of 20 years and a $1 million fine.
14 sep 2012, 17:26 , Respect -
Maria 2 nov 2002
Bust drug money ring
By ROBERT GEARTY and GREG B. SMITH DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
AN international money-laundering ring run by New York Hasidim washed millions of dollars in cocaine proceeds for the Colombian cartels, prosecutors disclosed yesterday.
The group laundered at least $1.7 million for the druglords, holding secret meetings with the Colombians in Miami and midtown Manhattan, according to papers filed by Manhattan U.S. Attorney James Comey.
The suspects were brazen - up to $500,000 would be laundered at a time.
One of the suspects, Avraham Zaltzman, allegedly bragged that he "could pick up money anywhere and wire it anywhere," according to FBI affidavits accompanying the arrests.
Zaltzman was so brazen that he allegedly picked up drug money himself in Madrid in April and flew to London, where he was detained by British Customs. They found $460,000 concealed in his vest.
Yesterday, FBI and Customs agents arrested Zaltzman and Aaron Bornstein, both of Borough Park, Brooklyn.
Ringleader hunted
Bornstein runs an interior design business there, and Zaltzman is a part-time printer who spends most of his time in Israel, officials said.
A third man who was believed to be the ringleader, Akiva Apter, remained a fugitive. Three others were named as unindicted co-conspirators.
The case came together in April after agents busted one of the co-conspirators - a man who speaks Yiddish and Spanish - and got him to cooperate.
The informant agreed to secretly record hundreds of conversations with his partners. He told the agents that between early 2001 and the day they caught him, he had delivered $1.7 million in drug proceeds.
The informer began recording his calls, more than 400 in all. He also recounted his involvement in the group, starting with one of his first meetings in Manhattan's Diamond District early last year, an affidavit filed by FBI Agent Michael McGarrity states.
The informant said he had traveled to Miami, where he learned the group was involved in delivering cash from drug sales in the United States back to the kingpins in Colombia.
Cash flow
Seven times, the informer helped move the cash through businesses and bank accounts, in amounts up to $500,000, he told the FBI. He recorded a June 13 talk with Bornstein in which Bornstein instructed him on how to deposit cash in amounts of less than $10,000 to avoid scrutiny, the affidavit states.
At the same time, the bureau began bugging conversations of other conspirators. In one April 21 talk, the informer discussed a shipment of cocaine with one of the unnamed co-conspirators.
Yesterday, Bornstein appeared before U.S. Magistrate Douglas Eaton and was released on $500,000 bond to be secured by $200,000 in cash. About a half-dozen Hasidim showed up for the arraignment.
His lawyer, Paul Schectman, declined comment, as did prosecutors.
Zaltzman was jailed pending a bail hearing next week. He requested a prayer book and prayer shawl while behind bars.
At least two other ring members have pleaded guilty to money laundering and are cooperating in the probe in the hopes of winning lighter jail time.
14 sep 2012, 17:26 , Respect -
Maria 8 dec 2002
Report slams Israel on sex slavery
Associated Press
Jerusalem - About 3,000 women, mainly from the former Soviet Union, are sold each year into Israel's sex industry, which takes in about $1-billion (U.S.) annually, a parliamentary report said Sunday, slamming the country's justice system for being lax on punishments.
The women, seeking to escape poverty at home, are usually smuggled in by traffickers who promise them legitimate jobs. Once in Israel, they are sold to pimps for between $3,000 and $6,000 each, the preliminary report said.
The women receive between $25-$30 per customer, of which the pimp takes between 80 and 90 per cent, the report said. The women work about 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week and receive an average of 10 to 15 clients daily, it added. Often, the women live in dismal conditions and sometimes they are physically abused or live in fear of their pimps.
Israeli courts generally reach a plea bargain with the pimps and sentence them to either a few months of community service or up to an average of two years in prison, punishments which the committee said are too weak to serve as deterrents.
It suggested that these crimes should have minimum prison sentences to deter the sex traders, who often jail, blackmail and enslave the women.
In July of 2001, a U.S. State Department report placed Israel on a black list of countries whose laws don't meet U.S. criteria for dealing with this crime and threatened economic sanctions.
Israel has reformed the law somewhat since then, but the committee said it is not enough to confront the problem effectively. In addition to changes in the law, the committee suggested an authority be formed to fight the "war against trafficking in people."
...Read more 15 sep 2012, 00:29 , Respect -
Maria 1 juli 2003
Ex-bank official Etti Alon sentenced to 17 years
Etti Alon, the former Trade Bank official convicted of having embezzled NIS 254 million shekels in bank and customer funds in order to help repay her brother's gambling debts, was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years imprisonment and a NIS 5 million fine.
The Tel Aviv District Court also sentenced Alon's father, Avigdor Maximov, to six years in jail and a NIS 1 million fine.
Alon, who served as deputy investments manager of the bank's Tel Aviv branch, was also convicted of conspiracy, fraud, and forgery.
The theft took place over a period of five years, at the end of which she turned herself in to police fraud investigators, cooperating with detectives and confessing to the theft.
Her brother, Ofer Maximov, is currently on trial. He reportedly told investigators that when Alon gave him the money to repay gambling losses, he was unaware that it was stolen.
http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/03/11/SouthAfrica_JewishMafia.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3723895.stm
14 sep 2012, 17:01 , Respect
Maria 21 nov 1998
How Russia's mafia is taking over Israel's underworld
The Israeli authorities grant citizenship to anyone who can prove Jewish ancestry
The BBC's Kevin Connolly investigates the Russian mafia's covert invasion of Israeli society.
There are alarming signs that the Russian mafia has taken over the Israeli underworld and is using the country to launder its vast profits.
A wave of mass immigration from the former Soviet Union has brought 750,000 newcomers to the Jewish state in the last decade.
Amid the innocent exodus were Russian gangsters, many of whom are believed to have produced bogus proof of Jewish ancestry to enter the country.
Police in Israel have been keeping around 30 organised key crime suspects under surveillance.
Billions invested in Israel
Gregory Lerner is under police guard in Israel
Former police chief Asaf Hefetz says £2.5bn ($4bn) of organised crime money from the former Soviet Union has been invested in Israeli real estate, businesses and banks in the past seven years.
Gregory Lerner, who was arrested in 1997 for defrauding four Russian banks of £70m ($106m), was reputedly sent to Israel to head up one of the money laundering operations.
Lerner, 47, will serve six years in jail after reaching a plea bargain with Israeli prosecutors.
Detectives claim two Russian mafia groups are plotting to "spring" him from an Israeli jail.
Increasing Russian activity
Prostitutes from Eastern Europe often end up in Israel
Commander Meir Gilboa, chief of the Israeli Serious Crime Unit, has noticed the increasing activity of Russian gangsters.
He says: "They come here because in Israel it's easy to carry out their illegal activities.
"There is no law against money laundering or belonging to an illegal organisation.
"It's easy for Jews to receive Israeli citizenship. If they are not Jews they are smart enough to forge documents in order to become citizens. They feel much safer here than in Russia."
Threat to Israeli society
Commander Gilboa says Russian criminal organisations pose a threat to Israeli society: "They have the means at their disposal to corrupt government and economic systems.
"The other danger is that they will also increase crime here because they need a lot of money to support their luxurious lifestyles."
One highly profitable area in which they are thriving is prostitution.
Dozens of brothels and peepshows have sprung up in Tel Aviv and Haifa in the last few years.
Modern form of slavery
The Russian mafia is making a fortune in Israel
Many are controlled by Russian mobsters who recruit Eastern European women who then become trapped and subservient.
Rita Rasnic, of the Israeli Women's Aid Centre, describes it as "modern day white slavery".
Women are often traded between gangsters for £6,000 ($10,000) to £9,000 ($15,000) and routinely have their passports taken away by their pimps.
Detective Toni Haddad of the Haifa vice squad says: "They are sold like slaves.
"Nobody cares. I don't think it's life for them," as the prostitutes have to do whatever their bosses want. The woman are "not free to do anything."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3723895.stm
14 sep 2012, 17:01 , Respect
Maria 21 nov 1998
How Russia's mafia is taking over Israel's underworld
The Israeli authorities grant citizenship to anyone who can prove Jewish ancestry
The BBC's Kevin Connolly investigates the Russian mafia's covert invasion of Israeli society.
There are alarming signs that the Russian mafia has taken over the Israeli underworld and is using the country to launder its vast profits.
A wave of mass immigration from the former Soviet Union has brought 750,000 newcomers to the Jewish state in the last decade.
Amid the innocent exodus were Russian gangsters, many of whom are believed to have produced bogus proof of Jewish ancestry to enter the country.
Police in Israel have been keeping around 30 organised key crime suspects under surveillance.
Billions invested in Israel
Gregory Lerner is under police guard in Israel
Former police chief Asaf Hefetz says £2.5bn ($4bn) of organised crime money from the former Soviet Union has been invested in Israeli real estate, businesses and banks in the past seven years.
Gregory Lerner, who was arrested in 1997 for defrauding four Russian banks of £70m ($106m), was reputedly sent to Israel to head up one of the money laundering operations.
Lerner, 47, will serve six years in jail after reaching a plea bargain with Israeli prosecutors.
Detectives claim two Russian mafia groups are plotting to "spring" him from an Israeli jail.
Increasing Russian activity
Prostitutes from Eastern Europe often end up in Israel
Commander Meir Gilboa, chief of the Israeli Serious Crime Unit, has noticed the increasing activity of Russian gangsters.
He says: "They come here because in Israel it's easy to carry out their illegal activities.
"There is no law against money laundering or belonging to an illegal organisation.
"It's easy for Jews to receive Israeli citizenship. If they are not Jews they are smart enough to forge documents in order to become citizens. They feel much safer here than in Russia."
Threat to Israeli society
Commander Gilboa says Russian criminal organisations pose a threat to Israeli society: "They have the means at their disposal to corrupt government and economic systems.
"The other danger is that they will also increase crime here because they need a lot of money to support their luxurious lifestyles."
One highly profitable area in which they are thriving is prostitution.
Dozens of brothels and peepshows have sprung up in Tel Aviv and Haifa in the last few years.
Modern form of slavery
The Russian mafia is making a fortune in Israel
Many are controlled by Russian mobsters who recruit Eastern European women who then become trapped and subservient.
Rita Rasnic, of the Israeli Women's Aid Centre, describes it as "modern day white slavery".
Women are often traded between gangsters for £6,000 ($10,000) to £9,000 ($15,000) and routinely have their passports taken away by their pimps.
Detective Toni Haddad of the Haifa vice squad says: "They are sold like slaves.
"Nobody cares. I don't think it's life for them," as the prostitutes have to do whatever their bosses want. The woman are "not free to do anything."