The Company for Restitution of Holocaust Victims Assets has been deficient and slow in returning assets to victims and heirs for the last four years, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss wrote in a report issued Monday.
The report presented severe and often critical defects in the company's actions, while the number of Holocaust survivors has rapidly decreased over the last few years.
"Returning the assets of Holocaust victims to their heirs is a moral duty, however it has not been done for years," the report stated. "Repairing the defects, in a short time frame, could slightly repair the injustice that has been done to the owners of the assets and their heirs, and to help Holocaust survivors in their last years of life."
According to financial reports from 2007-2008, the company held the money for Holocaust victim's heirs in trusts worth over NIS 680 million and NIS 684 million respectively.
The report found that though the company was instructed to locate the heirs of Holocaust victims entitled to the money in their custody, the active search for heirs, as opposed to claims filed by heirs, was a minor part of the company's activity.
The company's budget from 2007-2009 dedicated to allocating Holocaust survivors was NIS 636,000. By 2009 the company only handled 57 filed claims.
The report also stated that the company failed to publish their assets globally, as they were obliged to do three months after the time they were founded, and started their international campaign three years late, in April 2010.
Meanwhile, more than half of the people whose names were listed and published by the company as entitled to claim assets by July 2008, failed to contact the company and more than 1,000 claims that were filed were rejected.
According to the report, starting from July 2009 the company was entitled to use assets worth NIS 176 million and the revenue made from selling them to assist Holocaust survivors and for Holocaust remembrance.
The report also stated that the company failed to formulate long-term policy to help Holocaust survivors and failed to do enough to detect their needs, while granting NIS 2.9 million to other organizations established to assist Holocaust survivors, who failed to meet certain criteria to count as acknowledged organizations.
The report also stated that the company invested most of its efforts into allocating confiscated Holocaust victims' real-estate, despite the published agenda to allocate personal belongings and rights, funds and securities.
In response to the comptroller's report, the company issued a statement saying that they accepted the claims raised in the report, and that it was important to remember that the report only related to the company's work up to 2009.
"From that day until today, the company has made several important steps to promote the goals for which it was established – locating and returning assets to Holocaust survivors and heirs, assisting Holocaust survivors who need help, and supporting educational and memorial activities," the company's statement said.