Tel Aviv – The Tel Aviv Prosecutor’s Office has filed a criminal indictment in the city’s District Court against Natan Grossman, an owner of the Peleg-Yerushalmi affiliated HaPeles newspaper, as well as against Shmuel Elyashiv, Avraham Trager, Chaim Yavrov, Netanel Shtepfer, Shabtai Fein, Yisrael Tropper, and Moshe Brillman.

The indictment contains 27 counts of felony conspiracies to commit a crime, extortion, threats of extortion, and harassment by means of phones (multiple offenses), with the charges against each defendant detailed in the indictment.

The indictment says that Grossman, Trager and Elyashiv conspired to blackmail executives in large companies, including Strauss, Egged and Sano, with the intention of causing companies to advertise in HaPeles to generate revenue, and not the competing Yated Neeman. To that end, Trager contacted Lavrov, Shtepfer, Fein, Tropper and Brillman with the aim of threatening complainants and harassing them via various media in a way that would disrupt and ruin their routine at work and home, and these harassments would only cease if the latter published ads in the HaPeles newspaper and to stop advertising in Yated Neeman.

As reported by Vos Iz Neias