More than two years after the Slice affair exploded, in which approximately NIS 850 million in savers' funds disappeared, further progress is emerging on the way to returning the money. After a settlement agreement was signed in May between Slice and Harel, another agreement of principles has now been signed, this time with the funds marketed through the Finbert insurance agency, one of the entities involved in the case. If approved by the court and the assembly of members, investors will be able to choose between two different tracks to receive part of their money.
The agreement was signed after prolonged negotiations between the members' representatives, attorneys Eitan Erez and Mor Ben-Shoshan, and the funds represented by Adv. Alon Ron, with the assistance of attorneys Orel Hasson, Oded Savoray, and Roy Saluki. This is the first arrangement with one of the funds involved in the affair, and it is intended to enable, for the first time, a practical start to returning funds to members who invested through Finbert.
As part of the arrangement, two alternatives were formulated, and the members will choose between them if the agreement is approved. The first alternative is a fast-realization track, under which $27 million will be made available for the benefit of the members, with the aim of allowing them to receive a significant part of their money within a short time. The second alternative is based on the completion of the projects in which the funds were invested, in the hope that in this way a higher return can be achieved, but over a longer period of time.
The choice between the two alternatives will be made within the framework of a members' meeting that will be convened subject to court approval. Only after the approval of the court and the members can the implementation of the arrangement begin.
To understand the significance of the new agreement, one must go back to the beginning of the affair. The Slice affair is considered the largest financial fraud ever uncovered in a supervised Israeli financial institution. According to estimates, about NIS 850 million of savers' funds disappeared, an amount four times larger than the embezzlement at Trade Bank.
The Slice investment house was held by two families, Goldberg and Tocatly, and managed about NIS 4.2 billion. Out of this amount, about NIS 1.2 billion was managed in regular provident funds, which were later acquired by Harel, and therefore it is estimated that these funds will reach the members. The main part of the affair concerns about NIS 3 billion managed in provident funds under personal management (IRA), and invested in various funds abroad. Many of them were "red funds," those that in retrospect turned out not to meet the standards of the Capital Market Authority, and a significant portion of the funds funneled to them has not yet been located.
A few months after the affair exploded, the Commissioner of the Capital Market, Insurance and Savings Authority, Amit Gal, appointed CPA Effie Sanderov as the authorized manager of Slice. His job was to locate the assets and return the money to the members. So far, information has been located regarding only about NIS 380 million out of about NIS 850 million that disappeared.
As part of the examinations, it turned out that Slice did not manage an orderly system for attributing assets to members. Some of the information was managed through Excel files, for some of the members no dedicated custodian accounts were opened at all, and the funds remained concentrated in transition accounts. In addition, it turned out that funds of certain members were used for payments to other members, and in some of the investments no valuations or references were found. There was also a concern that members' funds were invested in investment instruments that were not permitted by law.
Parallel to the work of the authorized manager, a legal dispute also developed. Adv. Eitan Erez, who represents a group of members, sought to promote arrangements directly with some of the parties involved in the case, and received court approval for this. The authorized manager opposed the move and claimed that it was a bypass of the procedure he is managing, while Erez believed that direct arrangements might return the members' money faster.
Only recently was it revealed that the conduct of the Capital Market Authority in the Slice affair is also under criticism. According to the state's response to the High Court of Justice, the internal auditor of the Ministry of Finance already began in June 2025 to examine the supervision and control actions taken by the Authority in the case. The audit is still ongoing, and a draft of findings is expected to be delivered later to the audited entities. The state noted that due to the complexity of the issue, there is still no timetable for the completion of the audit. The matters were revealed as part of the state's response to a petition filed by the "Economic Unit" association, demanding the establishment of a government inquiry committee into the case. The state replied that lessons-learned procedures are already taking place in the Capital Market Authority, alongside the audit of the internal auditor of the Ministry of Finance, and therefore there is no place to order the establishment of an additional inquiry committee.
The first development on the way to returning the money was recorded on May 25, 2026, when a request was submitted to the Tel Aviv District Court to approve a settlement agreement between Slice, through the authorized manager, and Harel. According to the agreement, Harel undertook to pay approximately NIS 33.2 million, which constitutes about 90% of the insurance amount in the professional liability chapter of the policy, net of a self-deductible of NIS 95,000.
If the agreement is approved, the money will be deposited in a dedicated account for the benefit of Slice members only, in accordance with the instructions of the court and the Commissioner of the Capital Market. The agreement refers only to professional liability insurance and does not prevent further lawsuits against other parties in the affair, including former directors and officers. The authorized manager also clarified that the lawsuits he filed in recent months will continue to be conducted.
The new agreement with the funds marketed through Finbert does not end the Slice affair, but it marks further progress in the attempt to return to the members at least part of the funds that were lost. If approved, it will be the first time that some of the investors will be able to choose between two agreed-upon return tracks, instead of continuing to wait only for rulings in the legal proceedings.
The authorized manager's response
According to the response of the authorized manager: "The arrangement submitted this morning to the court regarding the Finbert cluster (a cluster of red funds in Slice) – was not formulated with the knowledge of the authorized manager, is unacceptable to him, and his full position will be brought before the court in an orderly framework (the arrangement was submitted by private lawyers about whom there is no information regarding the quantity of members represented by them and the manner of their engagement with those members)."
"Already at this stage it can be said that this is an outline that raises fundamental difficulties, both on its merits and in its structure:
A. The arrangement is based on the face of things already at the first stage on a waiver by the members of about 49% of the savings they accumulated throughout their entire lives (while the balance of the funds will remain in the hands of unknown entities).
B. The second stage places the members before two alternatives: One, receiving a return (uncertain) of the remaining 51% of the funds, while waiving a material part of the rights as stated; and the second, leaving those 51% of the funds in the hands of the fund entrepreneurs and the right holders associated with them for additional years, for a period estimated at five to six years at least, while exposing them to material risks and significant uncertainty which could also lead to even greater value destruction of public savings.
In addition, the arrangement that was submitted while blatantly hiding its appendices from the eyes of the public raises weighty questions regarding the identity of the parties to it and those standing behind the foreign funds, the scope of the obligations they actually took upon themselves, and the nature of the collateral offered within its framework. This refers, among other things, to collateral in relation to assets and rights located outside of Israel, through complex corporate structures and subject to foreign laws, when at this stage it has not been sufficiently clarified what the actual nature of that collateral is, what the possibility of its actual realization is, what its status is in relation to the rights of third parties, and what the degree of its effectiveness is in the event of a failure in the execution of the arrangement.
In this state of affairs, there is currently no sufficient certainty according to the arrangement regarding the value of the assets, the ability to realize them under the conditions presented, the claimed schedules, the scope of the actual return, or the ability to guarantee the members' rights fully and effectively.
Needless to say, on a significant asset mentioned in the agreement whose realization is supposed to be used for the purpose of the arrangement – the penthouse apartment in Netanya – a foreclosure order on the cautionary note in favor of Slice under authorized management was registered on September 23, 2024, in the Land Registry by decision of the Tel Aviv District Court. As of today, confidential proceedings regarding the apartment are being conducted in the Tel Aviv District Court.
In addition, the authorized manager already holds additional sums of money intended for distribution to Finbert members.
The authorized manager has so far submitted for court approval arrangements with the entrepreneurs of the red funds, in all of which a higher return rate was set for the members, and some of them have already been approved.
The authorized manager will continue to act to sue all parties involved in the affair and to sign proper and the best possible arrangements only for the benefit of the members."