Unit of International Crime Investigations
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Israel Police's Unit of International Crime Investigations (Hebrew: יחב"ל, Yahbal) was founded in the 1990s in order not to let the organized crime from the former USSR infiltrate into Israel. At the beginning this unit was considered to be the best in all that concerned the fight against "Russian mafia".
To share expertise and information, representatives of law-enforcement authorities and secret services from Western Europe and the USA were frequently visiting Israel in late 1990s, and these included the FBI experts. However, in course of time the Americans discovered that the most part of the data got by the Israeli colleagues from their “secret agents” was in fact taken from the Russian Internet sources. This discovery caused serious claims towards YAHBAL from the FBI, and worsened the international image of the Israeli Police.