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Price-fixing scandal: Unilever offices in Israel raided

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The Unilever raid comes on the heels of growing public discontent over the cost of living in Israel.

By World Israel News Staff

The offices of consumer-goods giant Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s parent company, in Israel were raided on Tuesday evening over suspicions that the industry titan had engaged in illegal price fixing with competitors, Globes reported.

According to the report, investigators from the Israel Competition Authority (ICA) seized computers and physical documents from the offices in Haifa and Airport City, presumably gathering evidence.

The raid comes some three months after Unilever’s top executives in Israel were extensively questioned by police, on the heels of an investigation into Israeli supermarket chain Shufersal’s alleged illegal price fixing.

In November 2021, the ICA raided the offices of Shufersal and Strauss, an Israeli food manufacturer, after opening a probe into suspected illegal pricing practices.

In recent weeks, the heads of major Israeli supermarket chains Rami Levi, Yochananof, Osher Ad and Victory have been questioned by investigators in the price-fixing probe.

“Unilever always acts according to the law and is cooperating with the investigation in every way required,” the corporation said in a media statement.

The Unilever raid comes on the heels of growing public discontent over the cost of living in the Jewish State.

Activist Itzik Elrov, who helped organize massive cost-of-living protests in the summer of 2011, has been outspoken about how overpriced goods could spell disaster for Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s “change” government.

“The wave of rises in prices looks to the public like a situation that has gotten out of control, and it could make the government pay a heavy price,” he told Israel Hayom last week.

“The government ministers are acting like ostriches, burying their heads down in the sand and hoping the public discourse will change. But the problem of the cost of living in Israel, unlike the coronavirus, is not a wave that ebbs and flows, but a problem that has to be dealt with to prevent it from continuing to escalate.”