{"id":575388,"date":"2026-08-05T09:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T09:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/575388\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T09:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T09:24:08","slug":"former-mk-michael-kleiner-linked-to-alleged-property-fraud-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/575388\/","title":{"rendered":"Former MK Michael Kleiner linked to alleged property fraud investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contractor Dudi Appel and former Likud<\/a> MK Michael Kleiner were among those questioned this week in a police investigation into the alleged concealment and transfer of real estate assets worth tens of millions of shekels, after their names were cleared for publication on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Appel, who has been in bankruptcy proceedings since 2012, is suspected of concealing rights to several properties and transferring assets under his control while under a legal obligation to fully disclose his holdings to insolvency authorities.<\/p>\n

Kleiner, a former MK who serves as president of the Likud\u2019s internal court<\/a>, was questioned alongside Appel and several other businesspeople at the Lahav 433 National Economic Crime<\/a> Unit on Monday.<\/p>\n

Police said the suspects allegedly acted systematically to hide their interests from authorities and obtain large sums of money. Investigators seized property that could later be subject to forfeiture if the case leads to criminal proceedings and a court approves the move.<\/p>\n

According to reports, investigators suspect Appel sold properties at sharply reduced prices to people close to him, who then sold them to third parties at market prices or above, transferred the proceeds back to him and received payment in return.<\/p>\n

According to reports, Kleiner is allegedly suspected of assisting Appel. The allegations remain under investigation and have not been proven in court.<\/p>\n

Appel denied wrongdoing, reportedly telling investigators that he had not sold anything since entering bankruptcy proceedings in 2012 and accusing authorities of persecuting him.<\/p>\n

Speaking after leaving the Lahav 433 offices, Appel accused unnamed people of attempting to take money from him twice and said they would \u201cpay a heavy price.\u201d<\/p>\n

His attorney, Efraim Dimri, said that the matter concerned an old case that had already been investigated approximately 14 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy client finds it difficult to understand why law enforcement authorities have chosen to revisit the same events and pursue him after the proceedings in his case were exhausted,\u201d Dimri said.<\/p>\n

The investigation is being conducted jointly by Lahav 433\u2019s National Economic Crime Unit and the Justice Ministry<\/a> unit responsible for investigating offenses connected to insolvency and economic rehabilitation proceedings.<\/p>\n

Appel has been in bankruptcy proceedings since 2012 over debts totaling tens of millions of shekels. In October 2025, the Tel Aviv District Court declined to advance his fifth proposed creditors\u2019 arrangement, saying he had not provided sufficient information about the sources of the funds intended to finance it.<\/p>\n

He was sentenced in 2010 to three and a half years in prison after being convicted of bribing two local-government officials and a senior Israel Land Administration employee to advance business interests. The allegations announced this week concern his conduct during the later bankruptcy proceedings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Contractor Dudi Appel and former Likud MK Michael Kleiner were among those questioned this week in a police…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4560,42,1158,16884,21141,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-575388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-fraud","tag-headlines","tag-israel-police","tag-lahav-433","tag-likud","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}