Legal proceedings / enforcement / the debt account

22,068.79 NIS - Answer required

Answer required

A Mizrahi Tefahot Bank client audited the bank's books. He was not looking for a scandal. He wanted to know how much he owed.

Among dozens of lines of fees, expenses and transactions, he found two small lines. One is labelled “שכ״ט ב׳” (attorney fee, stage B), in the amount of 21,456.50 shekels. It has no case number, no decision and no application. The amount is identical to the last agora to an attorney fee that the enforcement registrar had cancelled nine months earlier. Who entered this line, and on what basis, is still unknown.

The second is interest added to a daily charge set by a decision, although the decision itself said nothing about interest. In June, 469.06 shekels were added this way on top of the charge itself, and part of that amount does not appear in any column of the spreadsheet. In September, another 143.23 shekels were added.

Together: 22,068.79 shekels.

On top of that, 4,000 shekels deposited as security with a court treasury in another proceeding. The enforcement registrar ordered the attachment on them to be realized. Three months later, in the official debt report, the column “paid and deducted from the debt” reads: 0.

The client is asking for answers. Here is the affair.

October 2025: the attorney fee is cancelled

The story begins with a car loan. On 1 April 2024, the loan balance, 153,026.86 shekels, was transferred “for legal handling”. The creditor in the enforcement files is Mizrahi Tefahot Leasing Ltd., represented by the Chen Fisher Gabbay law office. Two files were opened: a bill file and a pledge file on the car.

In the bill file, it was reported that the warning was delivered to the client by hand on 22 December 2024. On that day he was outside Israel, as the registrar determined on the basis of the entry and exit report. On 21 October 2025, the registrar ordered the date of service of the warning to be corrected, and wrote:

The cancellation was also recorded in the enforcement system: a reduction of 21,456.50 shekels.

July 2026: a line with no source

In the pledge file, the registrar instructed the receiver, Victor Fisher, attorney, of the Chen Fisher Gabbay law office, to file an updated printout of the debt balance. On 3 August 2026, a Mizrahi Tefahot Leasing ledger produced on 22 July was filed. Its last line:

The two previous attorney fee lines in the ledger refer to a case number. This line refers to no case, no decision and no application. It does not say what it is. It only carries a familiar name and an amount that had already appeared once in the file, and it raises the balance to 201,084.08 shekels.

At that time, there was no decision in any file approving such a charge. The only decision dealing with this amount was the cancellation decision of October 2025.

August 2026: the client finds it, the line is deleted

The client cross-checked the ledger against the cancellation decision. On 10 August, he asked the registrar for instructions to the receiver, including a reference for this line. On 11 August, he sent the privacy protection officer at Mizrahi Tefahot Bank and at Mizrahi Tefahot Leasing a request to correct the information and to inspect the record trail. According to him, no answer to that request has arrived to this day.

The registrar noted in her decision that the ledger included an attorney fee component “even though this component was apparently cancelled”, and instructed the creditor to clarify the reason.

On 25 August, a new line appeared in the ledger: “cancellation of attorney fee stage B pursuant to a judicial decision”. The balance fell by exactly that amount, to 179,627.58 shekels.

The explanation came on 31 August, in a response signed by Victor Fisher, attorney, counsel for the creditor and the receiver:

“Technical gap” is the version of the party in whose books the line appeared. No documentation was presented alongside that version: no system log, no name of the person who entered it, no document on which the line relied. The client does not accept the explanation. In his view, a line with no source, carrying the name of a familiar component and exactly the amount of a component that was cancelled, is a line that can be called a mistake if it is caught, and collected if it is not. Which of the two possibilities is true can only be shown by the internal record. It has not been presented.

On that very day, 31 August, the Chen Fisher Gabbay law office filed in the bill file a new application to award an attorney fee at stage B, and the registrar approved it on 9 September “as requested”. From that point on, the attorney fee has a basis in a decision. But on 22 July, when the line appeared in the ledger, that basis did not exist. The approval came seven weeks after the line, and only after the client had found it.

The interest no one awarded

In the pledge file, on 13 January 2026 the registrar set a charge of 100 shekels for each day the car was not deposited, starting on 19 January. The charge itself was set by a judicial decision, and it is not the subject of this article. The decision did not set interest on this charge.

In June, the creditor filed an application to increase the debt. The attached affidavit stated only “with the addition of legal interest”, with no rate, no start date and no source. In the calculation spreadsheet itself:

The arithmetic does not add up. 13,500 plus 301.66 is 13,801.66 shekels. The spreadsheet shows 13,969.06. That leaves 167.40 shekels that do not appear in any column. In total, 469.06 shekels were added above the daily charge. On 7 July, the registrar approved an increase of the debt by 13,969 shekels. The interest line was not discussed in the decision.

In September, another application was filed: 95 days times 100 shekels, 9,500 shekels. In the spreadsheet: 9,643.23.

The spreadsheet refers to the Adjudication of Interest and Linkage Law. But the decision that created the charge did not award interest. In his response, the client asked under which decision or provision of law the interest was added, what its rate is, from when it is counted, and what the 167.40 shekels represent. As of the writing of this article, no decision has been given on these questions.

The 4,000 shekels

On 18 June 2026, two and a half weeks after his objection to the execution of the bill was dismissed, two decisions to realize a third party attachment were given in the bill file. One of them applied to security deposit funds held in a court treasury in another proceeding.

The client asked to stay the realization, among other reasons because the security deposit funds are not necessarily his alone. On 29 June, the registrar replied that if a third party believes its funds were attached, it must file an application.

According to the client, 4,000 shekels were taken from the deposit. To where? That is exactly what he does not know. What is known is what is written in the debt breakdown report of the Enforcement and Collection Authority in the bill file, produced on 20 September 2026, three months after the realization order:

Zero. The money does not appear as a credit against the debt, and according to the client it was not returned to him either. If it was transferred, someone is holding it. If it was not transferred, someone needs to say so.

The account

The line was deleted from the ledger on 25 August, and a new attorney fee was approved on 9 September. These two facts do not close the question. They sharpen it: if such a charge needed a decision to enter the debt in September, what put it into the debt in July?

Answer required

From Mizrahi Tefahot Leasing and Mizrahi Tefahot Bank:

1. Who entered the line labelled “שכ״ט ב׳” (attorney fee, stage B) of 21,456.50 shekels on 22 July 2026, and on the basis of what document?
2. Why is the amount identical to the last agora to the attorney fee cancelled in October 2025?
3. What is the “technical gap in updating the bank's systems”? When was it discovered, who discovered it, and where is its documentation?
4. Have similar lines appeared in the ledgers of other clients?
5. Why was the client's request of 11 August to correct and inspect the information not answered?

From the Chen Fisher Gabbay law office, counsel for the creditor:

1. Under which decision or provision of law was interest added to the daily charge, which the decision of 13 January did not award?
2. What is the source of the 167.40 shekels in the June spreadsheet?
3. Why does the September spreadsheet record 13 January as the start date of arrears, before the charge began?

From the Enforcement and Collection Authority and the Courts Administration:

1. Were funds from the security deposit transferred following the realization order of 18 June? How much, when and to where?
2. If they were transferred, why do they not appear as a credit against the debt?

The client is not supposed to be the internal auditor of the body collecting from him. When he is forced to do so, and finds in the ledger a line of 21 thousand shekels with no source, the explanation “technical gap” is not the end of the inquiry. It is the beginning.

Editor's note: This article is based on documents filed in the enforcement files and on decisions given in them. What is presented in the client's name is his position, and this is stated explicitly. Identifying details have been redacted. The article does not determine that any of those involved committed an offence. The article will be updated if a response is received.