A ring of smugglers whose operations involved at least $9,000,000 worth of black market money and the fraudulent import of many trucks has been uncovered and broken up in this country, the Israeli police announced today.
The announcement stated that two men are under arrest. One of them, a Belgian tourist, has been released in bail of 120,000 Israeli pounds ($40,000). In addition, the police authorities said, 40 residents of Israel, many of them recent immigrants, were involved in the ring.
The operation, according to police, was launched about three years ago but was broken up with the arrest of the Belgian tourist. One part of a complex scheme with many ramifications, the police said, involved bringing into Israel trucks which were presumably the private property of immigrants. The trucks were then sold here without the need for import licenses. It is believed that more than 300 trucks were thus smuggled into the country. Another part of the scheme was said to be the illegal export of money on which no income taxes had been paid. The funds would then be mailed back into Israel in the guise of gifts from foreign residents to Israeli residents.
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