Five Years After the "Tsunami": Israel's Food-Chain Price-Fixing Trial Opens — and Here's Where the Defendants' Prices Stand Today

By מערכת סופרקליר · 2026-07-14 · 5 min read

10 points — Today's gap on Superclear's price index between Victory (~4% below the median chain) and Yohananof (~14% below) — two chains the indictment says coordinated moves in 2021

On June 24, 2026, the evidence phase opened in the district court in one of the most closely watched economic cases of recent years: the food-sector price-coordination trial. On the defendants' bench — Eyal Ravid, CEO and controlling shareholder of the Victory chain; Etan Yohananof, CEO and owner of the Yohananof chain; Elad Harazi, Yohananof's deputy CEO; Ephraim Teshuva, CEO of Super Bareket — and the three chains themselves (Globes). Five years after the price-hike wave of 2021, the question before the court is easy to state and hard to decide: when does a public statement about raising prices, or a phone call with a supplier, stop being business as usual and become a criminal restraint of trade?

Let's say it up front: all the defendants deny the charges, the trial is ongoing, and nobody has been convicted of anything. What we have is an indictment, reports from the courtroom — and our own data on what these chains charge today.

What the state alleges

The indictment was filed in February 2025, after an investigation that ran for years (Maariv). Per Calcalist, at its center is one alleged method: Ravid, the charge sheet says, did not want to be the first to raise prices — so he pressed suppliers, among them Dr. Fischer and Schestowitz, to make sure the increases reached his competitors first. Among the statements the indictment attributes to him, as published by Calcalist: "As we closed, you'll see everyone updates the price," and, in an exchange with a supplier, "I don't want to sell an item at 7 if it can be 10."

Alongside that, per the reports, the indictment alleges an arrangement between Victory and Yohananof to hold back promotions in October 2021, and coordination with Super Bareket over profit margins on single-use tableware after the purchase tax was imposed. According to a client update by law firm Arnon, Tadmor-Levy, this is the first criminal enforcement of Section 6 of Israel's Food Law — the provision that bars a large retailer from interfering in prices at competing retailers, including via suppliers.

The recordings Ravid kept for himself

In early June 2026, weeks before the evidence phase opened, Tomer Ganon published an investigation in Calcalist into dozens of calls Ravid recorded and kept on his own phone — conversations with major suppliers and with people at competing chains, seized in the Competition Authority's investigation. In one of them, per the report, Ravid told a senior Strauss executive: "There's a mess here, so if you need to raise a price, brother, raise it."

In correspondence quoted in the indictment and in the press, Rami Levy — the chain that refused to fall in line — earned a nickname from Ravid: "the terrorist from Modi'in." Ravid, it is alleged, complained that he had already raised prices while Rami Levy still hadn't. Per Calcalist, if convicted, Ravid faces three to five years in prison. On the other side, his famous October 2021 Facebook post warning of a "tsunami" of price increases is the heart of the legal dispute: the prosecution reads it as a signal to competitors; Ravid says it was a legitimate consumer warning in an inflationary period.

What happened in the courtroom

Per Walla Finance, the Competition Authority opened the evidence phase by presenting recordings and correspondence, including a message saying that, as agreed, by Thursday everyone would raise prices — first Yohananof, then Shufersal. (Shufersal itself is not a defendant in this trial; per Calcalist, the matter of the chain and its former CEO is still pending at the Competition Authority following a hearing, while the files against Rami Levy and Osher Ad were closed.)

A key witness at the very start of the evidence phase was Eli Shani, Dr. Fischer's VP of trade and sales at the relevant time. Per Walla, Shani testified that in this industry nobody wants to be the first to raise a price. Per Ynet, Shani also testified that "Eyal Ravid sometimes raised the consumer price by more than the supplier's increase." The defense, for its part, argues the prosecution is dressing a complex economic reality up as a crime story — and points out that Victory's market share in 2021 was only about 5%.

And what the prices say today

While the trial grinds on, the checkouts keep ringing. We checked Superclear's price index — built from the full price files every chain is required by law to publish, as of our July 14, 2026 scan — to see where the chains on the defendants' bench price today, out of 33 chains in the index:

In other words: the two chains the indictment says coordinated moves with each other are separated today by a full 10 points on the index — a very significant gap in weekly-basket terms. And Rami Levy, the "terrorist from Modi'in" the indictment says Ravid was waiting on to raise prices, sits today at exactly the same price level as Yohananof (about 14% below the median). For the record, Osher Ad — whose investigation file was closed — is the cheapest chain in the country, about 19% below the median, and Shufersal prices about 1% above it.

To be clear: these numbers describe July 2026, not 2021, and they say nothing about guilt or innocence. But they do illustrate something worth remembering every time you read a headline about a "price war" or a "tsunami": the answer to who is actually expensive and who is actually cheap is never in the statements — it's in the prices themselves.

Why this matters to you

This trial is, in the end, about the power of a public word: the prosecution argues that media statements and social-media posts served as signals between competitors; the defense argues it was legitimate talk about inflation. The court will decide — and that will take time.

The consumer lesson, though, is available right now, and it holds under either verdict: don't buy statements, buy prices. Every chain's price files are published daily and open to the public, and we scan and compare them for you. The trial will run for years; checking what your basket costs at a competing chain takes a minute.

Sources