The Tel Aviv Economic Crimes Unit on Thursday filed an indictment with the city's district court against 11 defendants, including top former Meuhedet officials for a NIS 40 million fraud scheme from 2003-2008 to illegally grab customers from competing medical insurance providers. The scandal first broke with a State Comptroller report in 2010 calling attention to grave irregularities in the operations of the country's third-largest health insurance provider, Meuhedet. Following years of investigations, 11 individual defendants and 10 straw-man companies were indicted for participation in the fraud scheme. Some of the central defendants were top former Meuhedet officials – marketing head Yehuda Eliash and former Jerusalem District head Moshe Chevroni – as well as Avraham Siboni, who headed an external Meuhedet-linked marketing company.
(photo credit: The Jerusalem Post)