Bank Hapoalim ( he, בנק הפועלים lit. ''The Workers' Bank'') is one of Israel's largest banks.

History

The bank was established in 1921 by the '' Histadrut'', the Israeli trade union congress (lit. "General Federation of Laborers in the Land of Israel") and the Zionist Organisation. The bank was owned by the '' Histadrut'' until 1983, when it was nationalized following the Bank Stock Crisis. The bank was held by the Israeli government until 1996 when it was sold to a group of investors led by Ted Arison. The bank has a significant presence in global financial markets. In Israel, it has over 600 ATMs (automated teller machines), 250 bank branches, 7 regional business centers, 22 business branches and industry desks for major corporate customers. The bank's stock is traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. At the end of 2015, the bank had 11,930 employees worldwide. It is controlled by

Arison Holdings The Arison family is a Romanian-Israeli-American business family. Moshe and Sarah Arison immigrated to Ottoman Palestine from Romania in 1882, and were among the founders of the town of Zikhron Ya'akov. Their eldest son was Meir Arison, who was th ...

, owned by

Shari Arison Shari may refer to: * In South Asia, women's clothing also known as sari or saree * In Buddhism, bead-shaped objects among the cremated ashes of Buddhist spiritual masters, also known as Śarīra Japanese culture * Shari, deadwood on the main ...

. Arison Holdings owns a total of 15.74 per cent of the bank. In January 2014,

Danske Bank Danske Bank A/S is a Danish multinational banking and financial services corporation. Headquartered in Copenhagen, it is the largest bank in Denmark and a major retail bank in the northern European region with over 5 million retail customers. ...

and the Dutch pension fund PGGM blacklisted Bank Hapoalim for its involvement in the financing of settlements in the

Palestinian territories The Palestinian territories are the two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been militarily occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, namely: the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. The ...

Global presence

The bank operates several international subsidiaries: In the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...

and Poalim Asset Management (UK) Limited; in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

(

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, California, &

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at ...

) and in Canada; BHI Private Banking, Switzerland Bank Hapoalim (

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

) Ltd., Zurich,

Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situa ...

Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...

, and the

Cayman Islands The Cayman Islands () is a self-governing British Overseas Territory—the largest by population in the western Caribbean Sea. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, which are located to the ...

2018-2022 Plan

Bank Hapoalim reached an agreement that cancels the labor dispute called by the Histadrut labour federation in December. The Jan 2020 deal, according to the regulatory filing by the bank in Tel Aviv, suggests to raise worker wages by an average of 3.7% from 2018 to 2022, bank employees will also get a one-time grant of 210 million shekels ($60.6 million), whereas the bank also place to reduce its workforce by over 900 jobs through an early retirement plan.

Controversies and criticism

Tax evasion and money laundering

On 30 April 2020, the Bank was found to be complicit in tax evasion and

money laundering Money laundering is the process of concealing the origin of money, obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source. It is a crime in many jurisdicti ...

relating to

FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' (French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...

and bidding for the World Cup. It was ordered to pay fine of $874.3 million after pleading guilty to the first charge, which involved helping US taxpayers to stash some $7.6 billion in more than 5,500 secret Swiss and Israeli bank accounts. It was the second-largest recovery by the

US Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United Stat ...

since it began investigating the facilitation of US tax evasion by foreign banks in 2008. It was ordered to pay $30 million in forfeitures and fines in relation to the second charge, which pertained to helping launder more than $20 million in bribes and kickbacks for officials involved in the corruption scandal that embroiled football's world governing body FIFA in 2015. Internal Revenue Service criminal investigation chief, Don Fort, said "There is no excuse for a foreign financial institution to unlawfully assist wealthy Americans in flouting their responsibilities to pay their taxes. With today's guilty plea, Bank Hapoalim is taking responsibility for their role in deliberately breaking the law and undermining the integrity of this nation’s tax system." Assistant attorney general Brian Benczkowski stated that "for nearly five years, Bank Hapoalim employees used the US financial system to launder tens of millions of dollars in bribe payments to corrupt soccer officials in multiple countries", while William Sweeney, assistant director of the FBI's New York field office, said that "Bank Hapoalim admits executives looked the other way, and allowed illicit activity to continue even when employees discovered the scheme and reported it."

Involvement in Israeli settlements

On 12 February 2020, the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...

published a

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases ...

of 112 companies helping to further

Israeli settlement Israeli settlements, or Israeli colonies, are civilian communities inhabited by Israeli citizens, overwhelmingly of Jewish ethnicity, built on lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. The international community considers Israeli se ...

activity in the

West Bank The West Bank ( ar, الضفة الغربية, translit=aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah; he, הגדה המערבית, translit=HaGadah HaMaʽaravit, also referred to by some Israelis as ) is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

, including

East Jerusalem East Jerusalem (, ; , ) is the sector of Jerusalem that was held by Jordan during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, as opposed to the western sector of the city, West Jerusalem, which was held by Israel. Jerusalem was envisaged as a separ ...

, as well as in the occupied

Golan Heights The Golan Heights ( ar, هَضْبَةُ الْجَوْلَانِ, Haḍbatu l-Jawlān or ; he, רמת הגולן, ), or simply the Golan, is a region in the Levant spanning about . The region defined as the Golan Heights differs between di ...

. These settlements are considered illegal under international law. Bank Hapoalim was listed on the database on account of its "provision of services and utilities supporting the maintenance and existence of settlements" and "banking and financial operations helping to develop, expand or maintain settlements and their activities" in these occupied territories. On 5 July 2021,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...

's largest pension fund KLP said it would divest from Bank Hapoalim together with 15 other business entities implicated in the UN report for their links to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Bank logos

File:Bank Hapoalim 90s logo.svg, The bank's logo during the 1990s File:Bank Hapoalim 1998 logo.svg, The bank's logo from 1998 - September 2001 File:Bank hapoalim 2001 logo.svg, The bank's logo from September 2001 - January 2018 File:Bank happoalim 2018 logo.svg, The bank's logo since January 2018

References

External links

International website

Israeli website
{{Authority control Hapoalim Companies based in Tel Aviv Companies listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange Formerly government-owned companies of Israel Israeli brands Banks established in 1921