Yakov Engel

Yakov Engel was born in 1949 in Zagreb

Engel was born in Zagreb, Croatia, on January 17, 1949. At age 2 he moved to Israel with his family. They first lived in a transit camp at Kfar Hasidim and later moved to the Krayot near Haifa.

He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the Technion.

His first company, Dalton, made security doors and intercom systems, and he later sold it. He then became a builder, and during the immigration wave from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s he built tens of thousands of apartments for new immigrants. His company Lagna was listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, built housing in Eastern Europe, and was sold to Azorim in 2007 for NIS 430 million.

In 2007 he founded Engelinvest Group, which invests in real estate in Israel and the United Kingdom, and Elenilto Group, which works in mining. Elenilto held mining licenses in several countries in Africa and elsewhere. In 2015 he founded Tenlot, a technology platform for gaming and lottery operating in Latin America and Africa.

In April 2016 his name appeared in the Panama Papers. He is married, has 4 children and lives in Ramat HaSharon.