At 8 am today, the court observer in the IDB Holding Corp. Ltd. (TASE:IDBH) case, Adv. Hagai Ullman, submitted his report on the sources of Moti Ben-Moshe's capital in a sealed envelope to Tel Aviv District Court Judge Eitan Orenstin. The report is still confidential.
Capital market sources believe that the review team did not reach any substantive conclusions about the sources of Ben-Moshe's capital in its review of the questions raised in the Barlev report on behalf of Nochi Dankner. It seems that the team did not find a smoking gun that would give any reason for preventing the transfer of control of IDB from Dankner to Ben-Moshe. However, the team will presumably note that it worked under constraints, such as the tight timetable and limited resources.
In his decision on the future of IDB, Judge Orenstin ruled that the review of the sources of Ben-Moshe's capital was a condition for the transfer of IDB to Ben-Moshe and his partner, Eduardo Elsztain. The judge appointed the Israel Securities Authority, the Official Receiver, and Ullman to carry out the review.
The heart of the review was the down payments by customers of Ben-Moshe's company Xtra Energy Corporation (Bulletin Board: XTPT) in Germany, as first reported by "Globes". A report submitted by Yehuda Barlev, the investigative auditor on behalf of Dankner and his partner, Alexander Granovsky, to the Securities Authority alleged that Ben-Moshe, the owner of Xtra Holding GmbH, used down payments from customers of a subsidiary, Xtra Energy (through which he planned to take over IDB) to increase the company's profits, and that this money might be the source of the NIS 600 million Ben-Moshe deposited with the trustee for the investment in IDB.
The financial reports of Xtra Energy, a supplier of energy to end consumers, state that customers' deposits totaled €64 million at the end of 2012, compared with €52 million at the end of 2011. This increase was small compared with the fivefold jump in revenue from €272 million in 2011 to over €1 billion in 2012.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 1, 2014
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