Dim Amor

Avner Netanyahu, son of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, purchased an apartment in England in a city near London in 2022 under the name Avi Avner Segal, for £502,500 which was paid in full via bank transfer without taking a mortgage or loan. According to the British Land Registry, the purchase was made during a period when the British pound was at a historic low against the Israeli shekel, with the shekel value of the property standing at 1.97 million shekels – below the threshold requiring reporting to Israeli tax authorities.

The purchase was made at a time when Avner Netanyahu began his master's degree studies at Regent's Park College at Oxford in Near Eastern History and Archaeology. He was also registered at the educational institution under his new identity, with the internal college profile page showing the name Avi Segal, as well as in his email address. Avner returned to Israel after one year of study, following the events of October 7, 2023, and currently works at the strategic consulting firm Strategy& of the accounting firm PwC.

According to Israeli law, the obligation to report foreign property to the tax authority applies to assets valued above two million shekels. At the time of purchase in 2022, a momentary historic low was recorded in the pound-to-shekel exchange rate, when one pound was worth only 3.93 shekels. According to this rate, the apartment price stood at 1.97 million shekels, below the threshold requiring reporting. The sharp deterioration in the pound's exchange rate resulted from Liz Truss's short tenure as British Prime Minister, which led to a loss of confidence in financial markets. Had the purchase been made ten days before or after the date it was executed, the apartment's value would have exceeded two million shekels and required reporting to tax authorities.

In conversation with Avner Netanyahu, he clarified that this involved an official name change valid in all his identification documents. "I changed my name on my ID card at the Interior Ministry in Israel, and then I also changed my passport and driver's license, among other things", he explained. "It's a package deal, you can't change here and not there, it doesn't work that way, not at the Interior Ministry, not at National Insurance, and not at Income Tax". When asked about the background for the name change, he answered: "I didn't have security then, and I knew that if I walked around with that name in another country with Muslims, I would get stabbed by the first person who heard it at a train station. All my conduct was according to law, both here and there".

Regarding the purchase of a two-million-shekel apartment without a mortgage by a 27-year-old, he answered: "It's really nobody's business, especially when my father wasn't in office then. Everything that needed to be reported, we reported to tax authorities in Israel and Britain, we are with all relevant authorities and matters have either been handled or will be handled". When asked about the source of funding, he answered: "The source is them", and in further clarification said: "Them, and I don't apologize for it", referring to his parents.

It should be noted that the Ministerial Committee on Shin Bet Affairs rejected Benjamin Netanyahu's 2022 request for security for his son Avner during his studies abroad, based on the position of security officials who saw no need for it. According to Israeli law, one can change their name on an ID card once every seven years, so Avner's official name today is not Netanyahu but Segal. The surname was chosen in honor of his grandmother Tzila, Benjamin Netanyahu's mother, whose original family name was Segal. The Israeli community studying at Oxford at the same time also knew the new name, and to Israelis he met, he explained that he was using his grandmother's family name.

Avner Netanyahu is not the first in the family to change his name abroad. In the 1970s, his father Benjamin Netanyahu lived and studied for about four years in the United States under the American name Benjamin Nitay, which he adopted for himself. His brother Yair Netanyahu did not officially change his name, but identified himself for a period on social networks as Yair Hun. Hun was the original family name of Shmuel Ben-Artzi, father of Sara Netanyahu.

The property Avner Netanyahu purchased is not the first that Netanyahu family members have bought abroad in recent years. According to publications in the New Haven Independent newspaper, a company established by Yair Netanyahu, Avner's older brother, purchased property this year in New Haven, Connecticut, in the United States. The property value is $325,000, and for its purchase, the company Heritage Y.N Israel took a mortgage of $275,000. Yair Netanyahu was summoned this week to give testimony at Lahav 433 as part of an investigation being conducted around the issuance of diplomatic passports to those who were not entitled to them. According to suspicion, he too was issued a diplomatic passport he was not entitled to, while the Shin Bet did not believe this was necessary.

The Netanyahu family has three houses in Israel with a combined value of tens of millions of shekels. The first is the villa in Caesarea which, according to the tax authority, was purchased in April 2002 for 8.6 million shekels. The second is the penthouse on Gaza Road in Jerusalem, which together with the house in Caesarea is defined as the Prime Minister's official residence, and maintenance of both is funded by the state. The third property is a house on Haportzim Street in the Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem where Benjamin Netanyahu grew up, which was bequeathed to him and his brother Ido by their parents. In 2015, businessman Spencer Partridge, close to the Prime Minister, bought Ido Netanyahu's rights to the house for eight million shekels, so the value of the Katamon house was assessed at 16 million shekels.

Photo: MENAHEM KAHANA/Pool via REUTERS

Photo: From the Prime Minister's official Facebook page

Based on an investigation by "Calcalist"