Businessman who accumulated debts of 50 million shekels: "I did not steal. We simply collapsed"

The "YallaRent" vacation rental group, which at its peak managed about 200 properties in Israel and abroad, reached its end in court after accumulating massive debts of about 50 million shekels to banks, suppliers, and customers. The District Court ordered the liquidation of the group's companies, while the founder and owner, Yuval Rafael, is trying to formulate a debt settlement.

The final deterioration began with the outbreak of the Iron Swords War in October 2023. Rafael immediately opened the company's properties for housing evacuees for free:

"In the first days, there was complete chaos. The evacuees offered to pay, but I didn't think about money. I only thought about how I was contributing my part to the war effort."

However, later, a sharp dispute with the Ministry of Tourism over the classification of the properties led to a retroactive offset of about 3.5 million shekels from the payment framework — a cash flow blow that very quickly paralyzed the company.

Alongside the blow suffered by the entire tourism industry, market sources also point to overly leveraged management. The company took loans of tens of millions of shekels to purchase properties and relied on a business model that took on all the risk. "I had big dreams," Rafael admits to TheMarker. "The responsibility is mine, and surely there were things that should have been managed differently."

Today, as he deals with lawsuits and criticism from customers who lost their deposits, Rafael tries to process the fall:

"Suddenly I am in this place that failed, that needs help, that everything is falling apart around it. I did not steal from anyone and I did not lie to anyone. Unfortunately, we simply collapsed."