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NEWS
After 3 and a Half Years Court Approves Arrangement for Lot 106 in Beit Shemesh
by Yated Ne'eman Staff
The last of the apartment buyers from Heftziba, the construction company that folded, purchasers in Lots 106 and 107 in Beit Shemesh, received court approval last week for the arrangement they signed several months ago with receiver Mr. Yitzchak Molcho.
The story behind these two lots is the most complicated and saddest of the whole affair. Only now, after three and a half years of concerted negotiations, is construction finally set to get under way on these lots.
A few weeks before its collapse, Heftziba Ltd. gave a special discount on Lot 106 apartments in exchange for a payment of 80 percent of the price in cash in advance. They were promised that the a bank guarantee for the money would arrive within 90 days, but it was never provided. After the collapse it was found that the land where Lot 106 is situated had not even been fully purchased by Heftziba: of the NIS 12 million that should have been paid to the owners, DAMIBV International, only NIS 6 million was paid. Heftziba nonetheless sold a total of 44 apartments on this lot.
At the adjacent parcel, Lot 107, the land purchase process never got started. Essentially, the 25 purchasers bought apartments on a lot that did not belong at all to Heftziba. A total of 69 buyers in the neighborhood were left without an apartment, and without a bank guarantee, and the money that had been paid to Heftziba vanished without a trace. Furthermore there is no receiver to turn to in this case, because there are no Heftziba assets connected with these apartments.
The apartment purchasers at Lot 106, which is owned by the purchasers (through a contract and a warning by the Israel Lands Administration) through a payment of NIS 6 million, which Heftziba paid to DAMIBV Assets (now Ramat Chaviv), have begun to take steps to advance construction. NIS 5 million was found in the project coffers, money from the second phase, which Heftziba transferred to the intermediary bank, and another NIS 5.5 million from the third phase, which the receiver transferred from the general agreement. The receiver also agreed to transfer the rest of the apartments Heftziba did not sell in order to sell they to finance the construction of the 66 apartments slated for construction on the lot. With the addition of this money, the account for Lot 106 were supposed to contain NIS 18 million.
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