An indictment was handed down against the head of fictitious mosdos, a person who have allegedly embezzled the Ministry of Education out of NIS millions.

According to the indictment, this is how he operated. The head of a kollel carried out various activities in order to defraud the state and its institutions. false requests were submitted seeking support for torani mosdos. These reports included falsified data and misrepresentations.

Documents were submitted to the Education Ministry representing a false number of students, using personal information of students who do not attend the school but in fact, they attend other mosdos. The indictment states the fraud amounted to over NIS 2.23 million.

The director of the kollel is an authorized signatory in the Tikvat Geula nonprofit, which states its purpose being the establishment of mosdos for avreichim. Beginning in 2012 until recently, the defendant submitted false documents. He also sought Ministry of Education recognition of a school called Pe’er Yaakov, submitting a list of students for the 5773 school year but in fact, there is no such school and there were no education activities. During those years, Pe’er Yaakov defrauded the ministry out of at least NIS 2 million. There were similar illegal actions operating under the nonprofit called Kollel Avraham, which also submitted a list of talmidim attending the Menachem Tzion School. This resulted in embezzling an additional NIS 193,832.

The indictment adds efforts were made to hide the funding and to launder the funds to make tracking the end recipient more complicated. There are also charges of tax fraud and interfering with the judicial process by submitting falsified lists and data to the Education Ministry.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)