Cineworld CEO Mooky Greidinger received a six-month suspended sentence and a $28,000 fine in Israel

Mooky Greidinger, chief executive of exhibition giant Cineworld, has been sentenced by Israeli officials to a six-month suspended sentence and a £23,000 ($28,000) fine for breaching antitrust laws.

The lawsuit was brought by the local competition authority, which alleges that Forum Film, Cineworld’s local distributor, failed to supply eight films to Lev Cinema in Tel Aviv over a ten-year period.

A listing document the company filed with the London Stock Exchange on Monday said Cineworld had agreed with the Israel Antitrust Authority that it had committed a violation.

The court fined Forum Film £150,000 ($184,000) and held Greidinger indirectly responsible for “failing to prevent such infringement”. Greidinger was fined £23,000 (US$28,000) in addition to a six-month suspended sentence provided he did not commit any further antitrust violations in the next 24 months.

Deadline understands the maximum fine for a person in Israel for such an offense is £500,000. The maximum for a company is £1 million.

The LSE filing said: “The judgment is not expected to have any impact on the continuing operations of Forum Film Ltd, Cineworld Group plc or Mooky Greidinger’s position as CEO of Cineworld Group plc.”

As Deadline reported in July, the case dates back to the 2010 merger of Forum Film and another Israeli company, Matalon. Both signed deals with major Hollywood studios. Due to the size of the companies, the competition authority attached conditions to the deal. One was to provide all wide release titles to cinemas in Israel that requested it. Around 600 films have now been released across the companies.

Tel Aviv’s Lev Cinema claimed it had not received eight films in the previous 10 years, and a lawsuit ensued that eventually escalated to a criminal complaint rather than a typical settlement.