Israeli Company Rayzone Embroiled in Mining Dispute

Rayzone is an Israeli cyber and intelligence firm and last week, the company’s secret activity was unearthed by Calcalist. It also has a financial dispute ongoing with Dan Gertler, an Israeli businessman, and as part of this dispute, it also provided its services to Jewish-British businessmen Mendi and Moises Gertner. Arbitration proceedings have been ongoing regarding the dispute for years and documents submitted for those disclosed this information. Gertler and the Gertner brothers have been embroiled in a dispute over profits that have been estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars that were earned from mining rights of gold, cobalt, oil and copper in Africa.

According to the documents, two people close to Gertler had attempted to hire Rayzone’s services on his behalf. Attorney Eles Dobronsky, who has entered into several business ventures with Gertler and connected to Member of Knesset Avigdor Liberman, is one of these people. As per the arbitration papers, the services that were discussed between the two were the use of cyber capabilities in intelligence gathering and communications. However, Gertler had not signed any deal with Rayzone. The official releases of the company indicate that it is an offensive and defensive cyber company, which sells tracking and locating technologies to investigation and intelligence organizations across the globe.

Calcalist unearthed that the list of internal security bodies, clandestine services and intelligence services that Rayzone has worked with belong to a number of countries, such as Vietnam, Singapore, Greece, Mexico and the Philippines. However, this is the first time it came to light that personal cyber services are also provided by Rayzone to private businesspeople instead of just companies and agencies. The link between the Gertner brothers and Rayzone and the attempt of someone close to Gertler for hiring the firm was revealed in a testimony provided by PR advisor and strategist Zeev Feiner in December 2015. 

This was also a part of the ongoing arbitration proceedings. Previosuly, Feiner had served as a spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence where he had met Yohai Bar Zakay Hasidoff, the man who now owns 20% of Rayzone. At the time, Bar Zakay was the assistant to Pinhas Buchris, the Director General of the Ministry of Defence. Once he left the Ministry, Bar Zakay had gotten together with Yaron Elrom, Ron Zilka, Matan Caspi and Eran Reshef for establishing Rayzone. The offices of the company are located in Tel Aviv at the Toyota Tower. 

It is the same building where space was also rented by Feiner for opening his advisory company called PMPR around the same time. Feiner and Rayzone collaborated several times where clients were concerned because of their previous acquaintance. Feiner disclosed that he had renewed an old acquaintance with Gertner in 2013. He had first met Gertner in England when he was a student and had decided to help the Gertner brothers in some legal proceedings. According to his testimony, he had cooperated with the company Rayzone and the arbitration proceedings had involved Dan Gertler.