Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan with Moshe Hogeg – Beitar Jerusalem Twitter
Moshe Hogeg, a somewhat controversial Israeli businessman, is in legal trouble yet again. Calcalist has reported that a new law suit was filed in Tel Aviv district court against the Israeli entrepreneur and part owner of its Beitar Jerusalem soccer club. But this time the suit is coming from two of his personal friends — Roee Bruchiel and Eran Okashi.
The two men are joined by other businessmen in an NIS 18 million ($5.5 million) civil suit. Bruchiel says that he was a childhood friend of Hogeg’s. Okashi, who served as a bookkeeper at Hogeg’s Singulariteam Venture Capital fund. It is this fund which is at the center of the complaint. The plaintiffs allege that are owed money by Singulariteam after they invested in several of its failed projects. The defendants in the suit stand accused of creating fictitious and inactive dummy companies which they used as a front to raise money from unwitting investors. They then, allegedly, removed the funds from these companies, leaving them bankrupt.
Israel Channel 13 News reported that it received “dramatic” recordings of lawyer Stephen Kruger who until recently represented Singulariteam. It reports that $180 million was invested by Japanese investors for one venture on condition that all of their funds be used solely for the specific project. A document, however, revealed that only a third of it went to the project and the rest went other people’s projects.
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Moshe Hogeg only just escaped another lawsuit over fraud this past January. At the time Washington court dismissed a civil suit brought against him and his company STX Technologies, which alleged fraud, racketeering, breach of contract, and violation of Washington securities laws. That case revolved around cryptocurrencies.
The suit had been brought by American cryptocurrency investor Sean Snyder back in November 2019. In his lawsuit, Snyder alleged that Moshe Hogeg and STX caused him personal damage after the ICO (initial issuance of crypto currency) of Stox in July 2017 raised approximately $30 million. He claimed that he was misled into selling his tokens early and that this led to his losing $435,000. And this was the third time that Moshe Hogeg and his company have been sued in a single year over their cryptocurrency. Two other suits that were filed in Israel had been dropped.
Beitar owner Moshe Hogeg, left, and Naum Koen in Israel on Nov. 27, 2020. (Courtesy of Moshe Hogeg)
It was also around this time that Mr. Hogeg tried to sell half of his Israeli soccer team, Beitar Jerusalem, to a Sheikh from the United Arab Emirates. Mohammed bin Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, a member of the Emirati royal family, was the prospective buyer. But the $90 million deal was canceled at the last minute after the sale failed to get approval from Israeli authorities due to questions about Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s finances.
As for the new lawsuit, it states that the plaintiffs were used by the defendants because they were friends. It says, “due to the familiarity between the parties, the defendants enticed the plaintiffs to personally invest in Singulariteam’s ventures and raise significant amounts of money for them from different investors, including close family members and friends. However, over time it became clear to the plaintiffs that this was a fraud scheme…and they were shocked to discover that those business ventures weren’t designed to maximize investors’ profits, but rather a malicious plan by the defendants to plunder investors’ money. Investors were presented with a misrepresentation that showed there was activity in the ventures, but in reality there was no actual activity.
“After the funds were raised for those ventures, the defendants began plundering the coffers, and funneled the money into their own private pockets,” say the plaintiffs. They described the defendants as wasting the monies raised in ways that would “not embarrass the ‘Wolf of Wall Street’: buying luxury cars, flying around the globe on private planes and booking suites for hundreds of thousands of Shekels.”
Even if Mr. Hogeg escapes once again, like a Teflon man with no charges ever sticking to him, the case alone will certainly put another wrench in his career overall.
