Accountants against Yariv Levin: "The regulations create unjustified discrimination"

The Institute of Certified Public Accountants filed a petition yesterday to the Supreme Court through attorney Ronen Shapira against Minister of Justice Yariv Levin and the Commissioner for Insolvency at the ministry, claiming discrimination against the accounting profession.

The Institute is requesting that the defendants clarify why equal opportunity will not be given to accountants with the qualifications, education, and professional knowledge to enter the database of trustees who handle insolvency and economic rehabilitation proceedings for corporations.

Current regulations prevent accountants from entering the list, as the threshold conditions, which include, among other things, three years of experience in corporate insolvency, prevent them from doing so. In this matter, accountants are discriminated against compared to lawyers, even though they can present qualifications that lawyers do not have.

The petition states:

"These regulations create unjustified discrimination between lawyers and accountants in the recognition of their prior experience. While lawyers are recognized for their legal experience in representation only, accountants are not recognized for their experience in their professional work for the purposes of the regulations. This severely harms the freedom of occupation of accountants in a way that is not proportionate and constitutes an almost absolute barrier to submitting candidacy for the list of trustees."

The accountants are demanding an interim order to freeze the work of the trustees' appointments committee until a final decision is made on the petition. Prior to the petition to the Supreme Court, the President of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Chen Schreiber, who promised to change the status of accountants, tried to reach a dialogue on the issue with the Ministry of Justice, but all appeals were to no avail, and the Institute was forced to seek legal remedy.