Israeli Executive Sentenced to Prison for Defrauding the Foreign Military Financing Program

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A former executive of an Israel-based defense contractor was sentenced today to 30 months in prison for his role in multiple schemes to defraud a multi-billion dollar United States foreign aid program, the Department of Justice announced.

After being extradited from Bulgaria in October 2016, Yuval Marshak pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud, two counts of wire fraud and one count of major fraud against the United States in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut on March 13, 2017. In addition to his prison sentence, he was ordered to pay restitution to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in the amount of $41,170 and pay a criminal fine of $7,500.

“The Antitrust Division is committed to prosecuting individuals who, like Yuval Marshak, commit crimes that corrupt the competitive process,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Andrew Finch of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “Today’s sentence reflects the seriousness of these crimes and should serve as a warning to those, wherever located, who scheme to defraud essential, taxpayer-funded programs.”

According to court documents, Marshak carried out three separate schemes between 2009 and 2014 to defraud the DoD’s Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program. Marshak and others falsified bid documents to make it appear that certain FMF contracts had been competitively bid when they had not. Marshak further caused false certifications to be made to the DoD stating that no commissions were being paid and no non-U.S. content was used in these contracts, when, in fact, Marshak had arranged to receive commissions and to have services performed outside the United States, all in violation of the DoD’s rules and regulations. Marshak arranged for these undisclosed commission payments to be made to a Connecticut-based company that was owned by a close relative to disguise the true nature and destination of these payments.

The United States spends billions of dollars each year through the FMF program to provide foreign governments, including Israel, with money which must be used to purchase American-made military goods and services. The rules and regulations of the FMF program require the disclosure of and approval for any FMF-funded commissions and require that all goods and services be of U.S. origin to qualify for FMF funding. These same rules also strongly encourage the use of competitive bidding in the award of all FMF contracts. American vendors who receive FMF funded contracts are required to certify their compliance with these regulations to the DoD.

The sentence announced today was the result of an investigation by the Antitrust Division’s New York Office and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, with assistance from the Antitrust Division’s Foreign Commerce Section, the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut, and Israel’s Ministry of Defense. Anyone with information on price fixing, bid rigging or other anticompetitive conduct related to government contracts should contact the Antitrust Division’s Citizen Complaint Center at 1-888-647-3258 or visit www.justice.gov/atr/contact/newcase.html.