PI Charged Family of Hamas Hostage Over a Million Shekels to Increase Prospects for Her Release
As was published in TheMarker, Haaretz’s business daily, private investigator Zvika Nave claimed that he could do things to step up the pressure on Hamas to release the hostage, but once the family realized that Zvika Nave is a conman exploiting their situation, they asked for a refund.
Private investigator Zvika Nave asked for more than a million shekels (more than $275,000) to the family of an Israeli held hostage in Gaza, after the investigator claimed he could increase the chances that she would be released from Hamas captivity.
The hostage was abducted, along with roughly 250 other people, from Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7 of last year. Following a hostage release agreement in November 2023 and limited success by the Israeli army to rescue hostages, 100 remain in Gaza. Like many others, her family hasn’t spared any effort to try to secure her return.
Nave’s connection with the family began several weeks after October 7. He claimed that he could take various steps in a European country to step up the pressure on Hamas to release her. He demanded and received payment from the family in return.
Several months later, the family concluded that they have been cheated by Zvika Nave, and they asked for their money back. In deference to the family’s privacy, the hostage’s identity or details regarding the services for which they hired Nave is not disclosed.
Nave operates out of a company called CGI Group, where he is a partner, along with Yaakov Peri, the former director of the Shin Bet security agency.
In recent years, Nave’s name has come up in unflattering contexts in connection with several media, political and business scandals. He is presented to the public in part as the brother of Efi Nave, the former chairman of the Israel Bar Association, who is currently a suspect in a bribery case.
In recent years, a few cases have been reported in which CGI Group and Zvika Nave served as “double agents,” deserting clients for whom they worked to work for their competitors.
In 2019, Zvika Nave worked for Benny Gantz’s Kahol Lavan party to look into suspicions that party members’ cellphones had been hacked. Nave later deserted the party to go to work for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, to whose people, he sold unflattering personal information relating to Gantz in exchange for hundreds of thousands of shekels. At the time, Nave also offered to track Gantz through various means around events to help the Likud campaign, delving into personal matters in Gantz’s life in the run up to the election campaign at the time.
And in connection with a business dispute between businessman Dan Gertler and two brothers with a similar name, Moises and Mendi Gertner, Nave initially provided services to the Gertner brothers but around 2020 switched to work for their adversary. Nave also provided a court statement against his former clients in a case that led to the resignation of an arbitrator between the parties at the time – retired Judge Uri Goren.
Nave has bragged about an absence of ethical considerations in his work and that he is solely motivated by making money. Asked on Channel 12’s “Uvda” program whether ideological considerations come into play in choosing a client, he replied that they did not. “Money has the same colour and the same smell,” he said.
Following the report in The Marker similar complaints from allegedly other victims of Zvika Nave are being checked now.
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