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@Dimković
Ajde malo da se pravimo blesavi, je l´da?
Svi znamo da je kriza smišljena na Wall Street-u, odakle je razlivena na ceo svet. Ideja vodilja je da ovaj ogroman novac koji će " nestati ", tj. koji će se preliti u ruke inv. bankara plate poreski obveznici širom sveta. Oni ga plaćaju, kao što svako ko je uzeo kredit mesečno izdvaja €30-tak više na ime svojih prispelih obaveza. Skoro sve investicione banke na Wall Street-u su u rukama jevreja (Seligmans, Lehmans, Goldmans, Sachs, Warburgs, Schiffs, Loebs... ) ( bilo bi dobro da nam neko prevede tekst na srpski jezik, jer kao što vidimo mnoge ova tematika jako zanima )
22
WALL STREET, JEWISH / ISRAELI ETHICS, AND THE WORLD OF FUND RAISING
* Jewish dictate holds that the Jewish collective community is morally superior to all others and that, throughout history, they are victims of innocence. The next two chapters represent merely the beginning of an inquiry into this enforced myth, a myth represented everywhere in American popular culture as fact.
Among the economic fields in which Jews today are especially visible is investment banking -- "Wall Street," including interconnected networks of lawyers and other legal and economic manipulators stretching deeply into Hollywood and the mass media. Since the 1800s the "Old Crowd" of German-Jewish banking families (the Seligmans, Lehmans, Goldmans, Sachs, Warburgs, Schiffs, Loebs, et al) had predominated the field; a "New Crowd" of Jews has in recent decades taken their place. After World War II, melodramatically note Judith Ehrlich and Barry Rehfeld, "economic power in America and Wall Street was shifting ... Fresh faces came forward as if answering a call ... They were the children and grandchildren of Italian, Irish, Poles, and other Europeans who were not of Anglo-Saxon ancestry. But most of all they were Jews." [EHRLICH, p. 12] This is not to suggest of course that the seminal Jewish American investment firms are today inconsequential. Far from it. In 1999, for instance, Goldman, Sachs and Co. stretched across the world to become the "single largest and controlling shareholder of South Korea's largest bank, Kookmin. [BLOOMBERG NEWS, p. 11]
"In the world of high finance," observed Gerald Krefetz, "Jewish interest is concerned with investment banking, a broad catchall for activities ranging from tendering advice to underwriting securities. The heart of investment banking is public offerings and private placements, the risking of capital -- sometimes ones' own, but more often other peoples' -- to finance new companies, or expand old ones." [KREFETZ, p. 54] The nature of Wall Street entrepreneurship might well be presumed in the title of a 1986 volume by Ken Auletta: Greed and Glory on Wall Street: the Fall of the House of Lehman, or Martin Meyer's Nightmare on Wall Street: Salomon Brothers and the Corruption of the Marketplace (1993). Both Lehman and Solomon are Jewish-founded firms.
A French Jewish commentator, Bernard Lazare, noted Jewish propensities in high finance in the late 1800s:
"The man of the lower middle class, the small tradesman at whom
speculation has probably ruined has much clearer ideas of why he
is an anti-Semite. He knows that reckless speculation [by financiers],
with its attendant panics, has been his bane, and for him, the most
formidable jugglers of capital, the most dangerous speculators, are the
Jews; which, indeed, is very true." [LAZARE, B., p. 173]
Finance, investment banking, brokerage, and commodities are the speediest ways (short of outright crime) to get rich in America; by 1988 the stock and bond market and linked economic activities totaled 12 trillion dollars a year (six times the value of the assets of Fortune's top 500 companies). "Where the money went," note Ehrlich and Rehfeld, "and what happened to it were greatly influenced by Wall Street power brokers." [EHRLICH, p. 19] Corporate mergers, acquisitions, and takeovers have become an especially lucrative field. "By the 1980s, says Ehrlich and Rehfeld, "along with [Gentile] T. Boone Pickens, and a few others ... the [Jewish] New Crowd was at the very core of the mergers and acquisitions field." [EHRLICH, p. 15].... [This circle of money men] bought luxurious homes, expensive art, high-priced foreign cars, designer clothes and jewelry; they hosted or appeared at the right parties." [EHRLICH, p. 16] ... The old WASP establishment had seen its wealth eroded by changing tax laws and inflation ... arriviste Jews began to appear on the boards of such time-honored WASP institutions as the Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Opera, and the New York Public Library." [EHRLICH, p. 5] ... The New Crowd broke the stranglehold of the Establishment WASP bankers and [older Jewish] Our Crowd competitors ... and extended profit centers to newer financial activities such as block trading, risk arbitrage, a wide range of retail securities products, financial futures, listed trading of options, and junk bond financing that helped companies expand and made almost every company vulnerable to a takeover, a leveraged buyout that restructured corporate entities and raised critical debt levels." [EHRLICH, p. 394]
In the 1970s, "hostile turnovers," notes James Stewart, "bore an unsavory taint. They generated bad feelings, especially toward those who represented the attackers. This sometimes alienated other clients. Much of the WASP investment banks and loan firms preferred to leave such work to the other firms, many of them Jewish." [STEWART, p. 25] "Various techniques and instruments were used in the Wall Street boom of the 1980s," says Norman Cantor, "but the most consequential -- and lucrative was the floating 'junk' (low grade) bond to provide capital for involuntary takeovers of one company by another ... Fiscal critic Benjamin Stein [sees] the junk bond device as a huge fraudulent Ponzi scheme generating temporary money pools that could be looted by ruthless investment bankers and corporate executives and their overcompensated lawyers." [CANTOR, p. 402]
William Leach traces the influence that those in investment banking have had in shaping America, both economically and in influencing the nation's values:
"The growth of investment banking and mass consumption industries
were (and still are) closely related developments ... Bankers assisted in
undermining the competitive ethos by directing business interest toward
concentration and easy economic fixers. They helped local monopolies
become major national 'players' almost instantaneously. Banker-inspired
megalomania reinforces an already clear pattern in the economy away from
'making goods' to 'making money.'" [LEACH, p. 275]
There is a long list of Jewish entrepreneurs on Wall Street who, as a group, have been influential in literally changing the American economic system. Sanford I. Weill, for instance, "amassed a brokerage empire and eventually became President of American Express;" he was later "recognized as one of the most powerful Jewish businessmen in the nation." [EHRLICH, p. 13] John Gutfreund rose to become the chairman of Solomon, Inc., "one of the most powerful securities firms in the western world." Felix Rohatyn "perhaps more than any other, was linked with the flood of massive corporate combinations that reshaped American business for much of the past three decades." [EHRLICH, p. 14] Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., valued at around $3.5 billion and with assets of $90 billion, is "one of the biggest closely held U.S. money managers." It manages $55 billion "for institutions, such as pension funds, endowments and foundations, and $35 billion for wealthy individuals." [BLOOMBERG NEWS, INTL HERALD, p. 10]
Other influential Jewish Wall Street 'players' (financiers, lenders, borrowers, advisers, lawyers, et al) in recent years have included Alan Greenberg, Ira Harris, Bruce Wasserstein, Jerome Kohlberg, Henry Kravis, Peter Cohen, Joseph Flom, Martin Lipton, Victor Posner ("a onetime Baltimore slumlord" [FORBES, p. 45] who was indicted in 1982 for $1.25 million in income tax evasion and filing false tax returns [BRENNER, p. 72]), [Posner is "the flamboyantly wealthy Miami Beach financier [who has] been discredited as one of the most unprincipled and destructive modern corporate raiders." [BIANCO, A., 1991, p. 31], Nelson Peltz, the Belzbergs, and many others. Alan Greenberg is the head of Bear Stearns, Stephen Schwarzman founded the Blackstone Group, a prominent investing firm. Well-known traditional Jewish investment banking houses include Lehman Brothers, Lazard Freres, Goldman Sachs, Salomon Brothers, Bache & Co., and Cantor/Fitzgerald. [SILBIGER, S., 2000, p. 78-79] "Jews took the lead in the '60s," notes Jewish business author Steven Silbiger, "with new investment banking techniques that helped introduce a conglomeration craze by using multipurpose holding companies ... The concentration of Jewish-owned securities firms created well-paying employment opportunities at all levels of the securities industry: securities analysts; portfolio managers; and stock, bond and futures traders; brokers and deal-makers. Among the equity holders of the Jewish investment banking and trading firms on Wall Street are hundreds of Jewish millionaires. Upward mobility based on merit and high salaries has made working on Wall Street a Jewish-friendly career choice ... Although exact figures for the numbers of Jews are not available, they no doubt have a leading and disproportionate role on Wall Street." [SILBIGER, S., 2000, p. 78-80]
In a book entitled, "The Money Machine," about the KKR company (Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts), the author address three more Jewish Wall Street members:
"Here were three men who started a firm in 1976 with a few million
dollars and ten years later had control over what is believed to be the
largest corporate empire in the world ... Why did their names arouse
such intense emotions, ranging from envy, to awe, to fear?"
[BARTLETT, p. x]
By 1999, KKR controlled 23 companies. Among others, its stable included the Amphenol Corporation, Boyd's Collection Inc., Idex Corporation, Kindercare Learning Centers, Primedia Inc, and Gillette. It also made $5.9 billion profit in 12 years of ownership of America's second largest food retailing chain. By the 1980s, the company had "$45 billion in buying power," a sum "greater than the gross national products of Pakistan or Greece." [BURROUGH/HELYAR, p. 130]
A Jewish investment financier, Jeff Beck, has been afforded an entire volume about his life, entitled Rainmaker. "By the end of the 1980s," notes its author, "[Beck] was living a life of deceit so absolute that in effect his true personality had become turned inside out ...[BIANCO, A., 1991, p. 18] ... As money and money-making were glorified in the Reagan years, Beck's pursuit of wealth and the social status derived from it flowered into a full-fledged mania." [BIANO, A., 1991, p. 12]
Another Jewish financier, Carl Icahn "rose from obscurity to become one of the most feared corporate raiders in the country, Chairman of TWA, the largest shareholder in Texaco and USX (formerly US Steel) and a billionaire ... [EHRLICH, p. 15] ... [Icahn was] perhaps the most successful financial predator of them all." [EHRLICH, p. 290] Icahn is particularly notable for his repeatedly ruthless campaigns to take over unwilling companies, loot them for obscene profits, and -- successfully taking them over or not -- spitting them out again, leaving a wake of relative ruin. In 1982, for instance, Icahn warred with the whole community of Danville, Virginia, in his hostile bid to takeover a corporation called Dan River. Townspeople unified to resist him, investing retirement money and other savings into company stock. The company finally resisted the financial predator with a leveraged buyout; Icahn, however, managed to strip the town's economic lifeblood of $8.5 million." In another much publicized financial effort, during early attempts [eventually successful] to take over TWA Airlines the company president, then C. E. Meyer, Jr., called Icahn "one of the greediest men on earth." [BROCK, p. 171] By 1998 he was attempting to take over Pan Am airlines.
In an attempt to ward off Icahn's efforts to take over the Phillip's petroleum company, it had to go $4.5 billion deeper in debt, as well as cut hundreds of millions of dollars of capital expenses, sell off $2 billion in assets, limit investor dividends, and tighten budgets. 5,000 fewer employees were working for Phillips by the time Icahn was through. [BRUCK, p. 191] Icahn walked away from Phillips unsuccessful after a 10-week struggle to seize the company, but $52.5 million richer. "The business establishment took notice [of Icahn's recurrently nasty dealings]," notes Connie Bruck, "One close associate of Icahn recalled that Laurence Tisch [the Jewish] chairman of Loews and now of CBS, Inc., said to him, 'Tell Carl to cut this out. It's not good for the Jews.'" [BRUCK, p. 160]
And what of this sensitivity to issues of Jewish concern on Wall Street, Jewish solidarity, and Jewish economic influence, particularly (but not only) with regard to Israel? In 1974 Stephen Isaacs noted a premiere example:
"Gustave Levy [is the] managing partner of the important Goldman,
Sachs, and Company investment banking firm ... Many have regarded
Levy as the most powerful single individual on Wall Street, able to make
or break men and companies almost casually. He personally controls the
movement of billions of dollars. 'Gus is very conscious of being Jewish.
He's very conscious of the problems it can cause,' said Philip Greer, a
one-time stockbroker who had reported on Wall Street ... 'When you
talk about Jewish muscle, Gus will back off -- 'I don't make waves, [he
says], 'I've got it, and I can use it, and I know how to use it, and I do
use it, but I'm not going to talk to you about it because then that redneck
in Alabama is going to get very upset and I don't want him to know
about it.’.... In the Six Day War Gus was sending money over [to Israel]
like crazy. He would have financed the whole war all by himself. And he
made no bones about whether you were Jewish or not. 'You need
Goldman, Sachs. I need you now. If I don't get you now, you aren't
getting me later.' It was as simple as that. He could've raised it from
Schwartz or O'Reilly, it didn't make any difference to him, because
they're both after the money that Gus controls." [ISAACS, p. 263]
In 1995, Wall Street financier Michael Steinhardt (wizard of the moneymaking device, the "hedge fund") closed his company, Steinhardt Partners, to concentrate more deeply upon spreading the message of Jewish and Israeli identity so dear to him. With a personal fortune of $400 million, he joined as a member of a consortium that bought Israel's Bank Hapoalim and the Maritime Bank. One of his brainchildren, called "Birthright," was by 1998 still in its developmental stages; it is a plan to bring all young American Jews for trips to Israel, to renew their roots to Jewish and Zionist identities. "As part of the birthright of every Jew on this planet, we want to offer free trips to Israel in their formative years," says Steinhardt. [RABINOVICH, p. 20] A building in Manhattan for renewal of Jewish identity was purchased, and there has been sponsorship of the Jewish Campus Service Corps to pull young Jews to Jewish programs at national campus Hillel centers.
By late 1999, "Birthright" was in progress, at a cost of $210 million. "Funded by the Israeli government, in partnership with Jewish philanthropists and communities abroad," college-age Jews in America competed in a lottery for free-trips to Israel with the expressed purpose of being socialized into deeper identification with the Jewish state. The goal is to transport 50,000 Jews a year to connect to the tenets of Zionism. Not all Jews are happy with the program. The chairman of the World Jewish Congress, for example, Isi Leibler, thought there were many more worthy applications of the funds. Many Jews getting in on the program too, he noted, were already "from affluent homes." [GREENBERG, J., 2000, p. A1]
"It can be said," suggested Gerald Krefetz in 1982, "that Jewish wealth is generated from the financial side rather than the operational side. Many wealthy Jews have climbed the corporate ladder through law, accounting, and investment banking. Apparently, they are more at home massaging numbers than dealing with technical or substantive problems of production ... [KREFETZ, p. 69].... If Jews are drawn to the financial side, it is probably due to the fact that in the last decade or two the financial tail wags the industrial dog." [KRAFETZ, p. 69]
"Greed knows no bounds," said the New York Director of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1986, "there's always someone who makes more than you do. Investment banking is the new gold mine." [HOWE, p. 413] In the same year New York psychiatrist Samuel Klagsbann, who had "a lot of lawyers handling mergers and acquisitions" as patients, noted that for these people "business is God." [HOWE, p. 413]
"In the field of takeovers and mergers the sky is the limit," said prominent Jewish financier Felix Rohatyn (later President Bill Clinton's ambassador to France), "Not only in size, but the type of large corporation transactions. We have gone beyond the norms of rational behavior. The tactics used in corporate takeovers, both on offense and defense, create massive transactions that greatly benefit lawyers, investment bankers, and arbitrageurs, but often result in weaker companies and do not treat share holders equally and fairly ... In the long run we in the investment banking business cannot benefit from something that is harmful to our economic system." [EHRLICH, p. ]
In 1986, Dennis Levine was the first to be caught, a "dealmaker" at Drexel Burnham Lambart, for his "insider trading [exploiting confidential company information] which opened the doors to the greatest scandal in Wall Street history, a scandal that "caused grave concern within the Jewish community." [EHRLICH, p. 17] Not long after, Martin Siegel was also arrested. As the scandal opened up, it was discovered that these wealthy criminals were overwhelmingly Jewish, including all its central players. "What was particularly upsetting from a Jewish perspective," notes Ehrlich and Rehfeld, "was the fact that the [criminal] network began, in part, when one member first introduced another to a third at a United Jewish Appeal function." [EHRLICH, p. 340]
Connie Bruck, a Jewish journalist, notes that
"Privately, [lawyer Martin] Lipton expressed another concern, one shared
by many of the businessmen and lawyers who were part of the Jewish
establishment in New York, and by some of the Drexel contingent as
well. They feared that the common strain among these nouveau
entrepreneurs and their nouveau banks at Drexel -- an overwhelming
majority were Jews -- would unleash a backlash of virulent anti-Semitism
... As one Drexel client ... put it: 'It used to be that the Jews would go [to
WASP lenders] and they'd beg for money, and they'd be rejected while
the Gentile would come in and they'd all go to lunch and smoke cigars.
Now it's a shift of power to the Jews. Drexel is making these huge sums
of money and the banks comparatively little. The problem is, all
the entrepreneurs are Jews with the exception of [T. Boone] Pickens and
[Carl] Lindner -- and Lindner, a long time supporter of Israel, is the most
Jewish non-Jew I've ever known." [BRUCK, p. 205] (In 1999, Lindner
became controlling owner of the Cincinnati Reds professional baseball
team.)
"It is hard to grasp the magnitude and the scope of the crime that unfolded beginning in the mid-1970s," wrote a Wall Street Journal editor James Stewart, "in the nation's market and financial institutions. It dwarfs any comparable financial crime, from the Great Train Robbery to the stock-manipulation schemes that gave rise to the nation's securities laws in the first place. The magnitude of the illegal gains was so large as to be incomprehensible to most laymen." [STEWART, p. 115] "[Michael] Milken [and] some of his Drexel colleagues and anointed players," says Connie Bruck, "had made more money in a shorter period of time than any other individuals had done in the history of this country." [BRUCK, p. 20]
"A variety of critics voiced their apprehension about what they saw as greed that had gone out of control," says Ehrlich and Rehfeld, "... over the course of the next three years, it was revealed that more than a dozen insiders -- many of them members of Wall Street's most powerful firms -- as well as one of the hottest houses on the Street, had amassed millions of dollars in illegal profits. The accused were charged with violating securities laws that prohibited insider trading, that is, they used material confidential information primarily about impending merger bids, to profit from securities and transactions." [EHRLICH, p. 338]
"During the crime wave," says Stewart, "the ownership of entire corporations changed hands, often forcibly, at a clip never before witnessed. Household names -- Carnation, Beatrice, General Foods, Diamond Shamrock -- vanished in takeovers that spawned criminal activity and violations of securities laws. Others, companies like Unocal and Union Carbide, survived but were heavily crippled. Thousands of workers lost their jobs, companies loaded up with debt to pay for the deals, profits were sacrificed to pay interest costs on the borrowings, and even so, many companies were eventually forced into bankruptcy or restructurings. Bondholders and shareholders lost millions more. Greed alone cannot account for such a toll. These are the costs of greed coupled with market power -- power unrestrained by the normal checks and balances of the free market place." [STEWART, p. 16]
A major wheeler-dealer in the 1980s scandals was Ivan Boesky, who was (only a year before his 'public disgrace') also the Chairman of the New York area United Jewish Appeal. He also was a member of the board of both Yehsiva University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, as well as a self-described "founder and supporter" of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "Boesky's Jewish involvement," noted the Jewish Week, "resurfaced in the media at the time of his sentencing in December, with revelations that he had been taking classes at the Jewish Theological Seminary while awaiting sentencing and that leaders of some organizations that benefited from his gifts had written character references to the court, attesting to his generosity. The letters have sparked a new internecine debate among Jewish activists. Some claimed that Jewish philanthropies were 'going to bat' for a confessed felon because they had 'gotten their cut' from his ill-gotten wealth." [GOLDBERG, JEWISH WEEK, 1-8-88, p. 41] "Many Jews," wrote Ehrlich and Rehfeld, "worried that his trading abuses could cast a pall over the entire Jewish community. Not only was he the most important figure in the scandal, he was deeply involved in Jewish philanthropy." [EHRLICH, p. 341], including a $2.5 million donation to the Jewish Theological Seminary for a library to be named after him and his wife.
This former head of the UJA was a particularly nefarious character. He had been fined for violating New York Stock Exchange trade laws in the 1970s; [EHRLICH, p. 317], his 1985 book Merger Mania was written by a ghost writer, Jeffrey Madrick, and largely patterned (without saying so) on an existing volume by Guy Wyser-Pratte. [EHRLICH, p. 326] Boesky was the time of man who watched his employees throughout his company by a video system in his office; [p. 324] he paid up to $5 apiece for catered lunches so employees wouldn't have to leave their desks, [p. 36] and "screamed at [employees] regularly." His oldest son, Billy, is reported to have called his father "stark raving mad." [p. 40] Upon Boesky's installment as the UJA campaign general chairman, he told his Jewish audience: "We must make an enormous effort to encourage people's sense of responsibility -- to be sure that at the very top we have the right attitudes about giving to the campaign. Attitude filters down." [JEWISH WEEK, 6-29-84, p. 7]
The biggest fish caught in the Wall Street scandal, however, was super billionaire Michael Milken, the "junk bond king," who was charged with racketeering and mail and securities fraud. Milken single-handedly threatened to fulfill in real life the most profound of traditional anti-Semitic nightmare fantasies. A former Milken associate, notes Jewish journalist Connie Bruck, saw in Milken "the force of ... obsession, the megalomania, the conviction of a cause so just that the end justifies the means and, finally, the conceptualization of the corporate vehicle as a means of extending control nationwide -- and then worldwide." [BRUCK, p. 358] "Many billions of dollars were at his command," notes Bruck, "capital, as Milken had been saying and proving for a long time, was not a scarce resource. The only limits to his power, it seemed, would be the limits of his fertile imagination." [BRUCK, p. 359] Milken, sometimes present at Simon Wiesenthal functions [BRUCK, p. 313], was well-known for being able to assemble billions of dollars overnight to aid corporate takeovers. At a yearly Milken-centered conference of the world's leading corporate takeover specialists, affectionately called the Predator's Ball, a close Milken associate, Donald Engel, arranged for high-priced prostitutes to service the gathered "predators." [BRUCK, p. 15]
The goal of Milken and his predatory cronies, says Leon Black of Drexel Lambart (the company that was ostensibly Milken's employer) was to finance "the robber barons who would become the owners of major companies in the future." [BRUCK, p. 149] (Black's father, Eli, was the "rabbinically-trained corporate chieftain of United Brands" who in 1975 jumped out a skyscraper window when it was revealed that he was paying bribes to foreign governments). [BRUCK, p. 65] Among the players in this scenario, Black particularly noted robber barons Carl Icahn, Henry Kravits (who guided a $6.2 billion buyout of the Beatrice company), Samuel Heyman (chairman of GAF who bid $6 billion for Union Carbide), Ronald Perelman, and a lone Gentile, Rupert Murdoch (who was financed by Milken to take over Metromedia). [BRUCK, p. 245] "By ... 1985...," says Connie Bruck, "Milken was moving his players across the M&A [corporate mergers and acquisitions] field as though it were a chess board." [BRUCK, p. 106]
Ron Perelman's rise is typical. Closely associated with Milken, his mentor's junk bonds supported a variety of Perelman-inspired corporate invasions. Perelman seized a resistant Revlon with a company one-eighth its size, Pantry Pride. (In 1991 he installed Jerry Levin to head it). He also took over a group of tottering Savings and Loans for $315 million, suddenly controlling $7.1 billion in assets. In 1982 Perelman faced a lawsuit in his takeover of Technicolor. "Taken as a whole," says Connie Bruck, "the complaint painted a picture of Perelman allegedly using deceit and secret deals -- money here, position there, whatever it took -- to buy off the necessary people and get the company." [DEALY, p. 308] In Perelman's hostile takeover of Revlon, he tried to bribe the CEO of that company, Michel Bergerac. [BRUCK, p. 194]
Another key Milken crony was Fred Carr (born Seymour Fred Cohen), head of the Beverly Hills-based First Executive Corporation, described by Benjamin Stein as "the largest insurance catastrophe in the history of the United States." [STEIN, B., p. 86] Others who made use of Milken junk bonds to build illusorily business empires include Perry Mendel and Richard Grassgreen of the conglomerate Enstar (in Montgomery, Alabama). Enstar eventually went bankrupt, becoming, notes Benjamin Stein, "a source of rage, frustration, and loss for the people of Montgomery. They were taken, and taken badly." [STEIN, B., p. 111] Mendel and Grassgreen were convicted of fraud in 1991.
Milken has had a powerful hand in a wide range of other attempted corporate takeovers. "He would cause frightened managements," says Bruck, "to focus on short term gains and elaborate defenses rather than research and development that makes for sustained [corporate] growth. It would cause the loss of jobs, as companies were taken over and broken up." [BRUCK, p. 19] Milken aided, for further example, Eli Jacobs' acquisition of the Memorex Corporation in 1986. And during the banking Savings and Loans scandals of the 1980s, Columbia Savings had a branch office one floor above Milken's own office; Columbia CEO Thomas Spiegel eventually purchased about $4 billion of Milken's junk bonds. [DEALY, p. 307] In the early 1980s Saul Steinberg, with Milken financing, had attempted a hostile takeover of the Disney corporation. "Steinberg got calls from friends, Jews and non-Jews alike," notes Joe Flower, "warning him, saying, as Steinberg later characterized it, 'Saul, it's going to be you -- and with the name Saul Steinberg it's clear where you are and what you are -- taking over another white Anglo-Saxon Protestant company. In all the little towns of America they're going to say, 'That Jew took over Walt Disney. What would Walt say?' But the warnings did not make Steinberg hesitate. 'They just made me angry.'" [FLOWER, p. 112]
In 1969 Steinberg had tried to take over one of the most important banks in America, the $9 billion Chemical Bank. "Those who ... combined against him," noted Connie Bruck, "included not only the director and management of Chemical, but most of the banking business, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and the legislature of New York state, and members of the Federal Reserve Board and the Senate Banking and Currency Committee." [BRUCK, p. 36]
Although Milken eventually agreed to accept a six felonies conviction and pay $600 million (a sum larger than the yearly budget of the Securities Commission that sought to prosecute him) [p. 16], the prosecution of fabulously wealthy Milken was no easy matter. There was, for all intents and purposes, no money limit to his personal defense. He and his firm, Drexel, planned to spend up to $650 million to fight his conviction. [STEWART, p. 347] This included a massive $140 million public relations campaign to change his public image from criminal to hero, an effort "revolving around the theme that [he and his company] help[ed] to raise money [that] benefited every American." [STEWART, p. 346] The public relations firm Milken hired referred to him as a "national treasure." [STEWART, p. 377] In an effort to control public discourse about himself, Milken even bought the rights to photographs of him at all the news wire companies. [STEWART, p. 372] In February 1986 he even offered to pay journalist Connie Bruck to not finish, and publish, a book she was working on about him and his associates. [STEWART, p. 381] Expecting a significant Black presence in the New York City jury that would try him, Milken hired an expert on public relations in the Black community; the wealthy financier suddenly had an interest in the underprivileged and paid for 1,700 ghetto kids to go to a Mets baseball game. [STEWART, p. 400] Milken clients and sycophants even took out full page ads in major papers, including the New York Times, proclaiming, "We Believe in You." [STEWART, p. 418]
Milken ended up spending only a little over two years in prison, a small sacrifice for the staggering amount of wealth he accumulated. He was sentenced, notes Jewish scholar Norman Cantor, "by a Gentile woman judge who was married to a prominent Jewish lawyer. Eventually she found grounds for sharply reducing his sentence ... The skill of some Jewish billionaires in skirting the limits of the law but somehow emerging unscathed, with the aid of high-priced Jewish attorneys, and a compliant press, was remarkable." [CANTOR, p. 404] Milken court fines alone eventually amounted to $1.1 billion. Still on probation, in November 1997 the New York Times noted that "evidence of further illegal behavior since his release might well cause the government to request further sanctions against Mr. Milken, including even his return to prison." [TRUELL, D4] Since prison, Milken has been busy collecting tens of millions of dollars, "counseling" the MCI Communications Corporation, advising principal players in the Time-Warner-Turner Broadcasting mass media merger, and working with financier Ronald Perelman. In 1996 the New York Times noted Milken's presence in Israel in negotiations with a company called the Eisenberg Group. "The Milken Group," said the Times, "might invest in Israel Chemicals, of which the Israeli government owns 48.5%." [NYT, 8-14-96] The Eisenberg Group at the fore of all this is headed by Shaul Eisenberg, the richest man in Israel, who, "says Alan Vorspan, "[is] the shadowy Israeli billionaire who had been brokering Israel defense technology to China for more than ten years ... 'Arms merchant of the world' is not synonymous with a 'light unto the nations.'" [VORSPAN, p. 31] "The arms business," note Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, "was and remains central to [Eisenberg's] operation." [COCKBURN, p. 17] Other holdings include everything from chemical factories in Korea to projects in Central America. [COCKBURN, p. 12-13]
James Stewart, a non-Jew and an editor at the Wall Street Journal, came under fierce attack for "anti-Semitism" for his book about Milken and the Wall Street scandals, the Den of Thieves (a title taken from this New Testament verse: "And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the table of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves. And say unto them, it is written. My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves." [MATHEW, 21:12-13])
A lawyer for Milken, a man we have run across before, Alan Dershowitz, tried to use the now standard Jewish defense argument -- an accusation of anti-Semitism -- as a tool to spare his criminal client jail time. Dershowitz published editorial pieces in the Wall Street Journal attacking Stewart. He also paid $45,000 for a full page ad in the New York Times the next day to outline his accusations, and half-page ads in other papers, everywhere charging anti-Semitism. In a letter to the New York Times Book Review section Dershowitz attacked both Stewart and the Review's reviewer of Den of Thieves, Michael Thomas, (a "money" columnist for the New York Observer) for alleged anti-Semitism. "Both," Dershowitz wrote, "seem preoccupied by Jews."
In defense, Thomas (whose novel Hanover Place and its free exploration of Jewish corruption on Wall Street has also been called anti-Semitic) said:
"If I point out that 9 out of 10 people involved in street crime are Blacks,
that's an interesting sociological observation. If I point out that 9 out of
10 people involved in securities indictments are Jewish, that is an anti-
Semitic slur. I cannot sort the difference." [HOYT]
When business journalist Connie Bruck published The Predator's Ball, a volume about Milken and the junk bond world, a Drexel lawyer (where Milken worked) accused her of anti-Semitism. "I remember a lawyer at Chas Gordeon and Reindel screaming at me and accusing me of anti-Semitism," said Bruck later, "And I'm Jewish, so that made it more unpleasant. It all comes from Milken. Milken told friends of his, who repeated it to me, that he believed the government's investigation was fueled by anti-Semitism." [HOYT]
"If Stewart is guilty of anything," wrote Allen Sloan of Newsday, "it's breaking the Cohen Rule when dealing with ethnic groups. It's only safe to identify a person ethnically or racially in a positive context ... Down deep we all understand the rules. But these rules shackle journalists and muffle the truth. They amount to censorship ... By blasting Stewart (a full page ad, for crying out loud!) for doing nothing more than stating the truth, Dershowitz has attempted to discredit his reporting by besmirching his character -- and, in the process, making Milken seem a victim of religious bigotry. Dershowitz's accusations, beside the point and below the belt, is a form of scapegoatism that comes perilously close to what it purportedly condemns." [HOYT]
Across the ocean, England had its own very publicized Jewish financier scandal at about the same time -- sometimes known as the "Guinness Four" affair. It was, noted the (London) Independent, "the most notorious insider dealing fraud of the Eighties," a plot to boost the share value of the Guinness corporation. [BRAID, p. 1] On trial were Gerald Ronson (head of Heron International), Ernest Saunders, Jack Lyons, and Anthony Parnes. They were all convicted, but each received reduced, short-term jail sentences. "All four defendants," noted the Times (of London), "... are Jews ... Any attempt to incite anti-Semitism because of Jewish financial misbehavior has to be deplored and opposed. But any attempt to minimize or excuse the offenses is also unacceptable ... In folk prejudice the 'Jewish banker' is an unkind cliché, but herein lies the problem. He exists ... Quiet voices are to be heard that such [beat the system] attitudes are more common than ought to be any Jewish financier. And recognizing that such a malady exists is the first condition for curing it." [LONGLEY, 9-1-90]
Only a few years earlier, in the 1980s too, was the case of yet another prominent Jewish American entrepreneur, Marc Rich (father's name originally Reich). "In the shadowy, secret world of commodities trading," noted John Ingham and Lynne Feldman, "Marc Rich had no peer ... Appellations for Marc Rich have included 'ruthless tycoon,' 'vengeful businessman,' and 'scheming marketeer.' Often called the most corrupt man in this fraternity of free booting capitalists, Rich was also among the most secretive." [INGHAM/FELDMAN, p. 550] Rich even managed to profit off millions of barrels of oil from Iran during the Iranian hostage crisis. In 1983, he and associate, Pinky Green, fled to Switzerland to avoid a warrant out for their arrest. (Rich has deep ties to Israel and has been involved over the years in "negotiating the return of captured Israeli soldiers and Jewish dissidents. In a controversial move, President Bill Clinton pardoned Rich's crimes as he left the White House in 2001. "Several Israeli officials wrote Clinton in support of [Rich's] pardon.") [MSNBC, 2-2-2001]
Perhaps Rich had occasion in Europe to run into fellow white collar criminal Gerald Goldwell. Goldwell, notes a volume entitled Organized Crime in Europe, epitomized those involved in "extensive international fraud ... making use of several shell companies and of insolvent firms ... The leader of one of the largest such organizations was Gerald Goldwell, a well-known American fraudster, whose career of 15 years in business crime made him one of the most experienced crime entrepreneurs in his field." [DUYNE, p. 12] Based in Amsterdam, Goldwell's criminal scope included Bermuda, Dutch Antilles, the Bahamas, Canada, Luxemburg, Germany and Panama.
In 1980, in Switzerland, a Jewish immigrant from Bulgaria, Eli Pinkas, and his wife committed suicide as their swindles began collapsing down upon him. After his death, noted the Washington Post, "it was revealed that the quiet executive was, in fact, a master swindler who created an elaborate portfolio of false documents and records to steal more than $140 million from an international array of banks and industries." The Pinkas scam was noted as the "biggest private financial scandal in recent Swiss history." [BERRY, J., F., 7-20-80,p. A1]
At about the same time in Panama, in an unrelated criminal enterprise, Jewish entrepreneur Isaac Zafrani "in two years time, had become the most powerful video pirate in the world. By selling fraudulent copies of first-run films, Zafrani, more than any other single operation world-wide, posed the greatest threat to legitimate video and theatrical interests." By 1984, his profits in the bootleg business were about $20 million. [FRANKLIN, P., p. 113]
In fact, the whole Jewish state of Israel is an Isaac Zafrani. As Israel's Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies noted in March 2000:
"Israel is known the world over for intellectual properties rights
piracy. Indeed, it is likely that Israel will soon be downgraded from
the second worst rating of violating countries to the worst by the
International Property Alliance (IIPA), the international organization
fighting software and intellectual property crimes of piracy."
[INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STRATEGIC..., 2000]
"In 1998," notes the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, "an American delegation visited Israel to investigate the issue and found Israel to be 'an international center for pirate distribution' -- estimating that the extent of the forgery industry reached tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of dollars. The U. S. delegation threatened to impose sanctions against Israel by increasing duty tax for Israeli imports to the United States. The delegation also noted that the Israeli forgery industry has grown in recent years because of the infiltration of organized crime." [ALON, G., 6-22-01]
The 1980s also highlighted young Jewish swindler Barry Minkow of Reseda, California, whose misdeeds entitled his story to be immortalized in an entire volume, subtitled The Kid Who Swindled Wall Street. Minkow was sentenced to prison. "Barry," notes Daniel Akst, "succeeded in creating not a corporation, but the hologram of one." His ZZZZ Best firm, founded on carpet-cleaning, eventually was worth $200 million. As a result of Minkow's scams, "widows and orphans lost their money. Hard working folks lost their jobs, or had their careers ruined, their lives stained, their hopes turned to ash." The author who recounts Minkow's business career calls him a psychopath, "someone who can act without regard to conscience, victimizing people again and again without remorse." [AKST, D., p. 5, 6, 270] Minkow associates included Maurice Rind, "a stock swindler before financial fraud was fashionable." [AKST, D., p. vii]
In a 1994 case, Martin Wolfe of Baton Raton, Florida, was the "principal figure" in a nationwide investment scam involving pizza vending machines, defrauding some investors of their life savings for nonexistent machines. "You have to plant the seed," Wolfe once told a business audience, "so the seed grows into an oak, and the oak grows into greed, which takes over the whole body. Greed is good." [IWANOWSKI, J., 3-20-94, p. E1] In 1996 investors in California's Pioneer Mortgage firm lost $250 million. As the San Diego Union Tribune observed, "Many got in because Pioneer's Chief Executive -- Gary Naiman -- was very active in his synagogue and activities related to Israel." [BAUDER, D., 1-19-96, p. C2]
In Arizona, in 1997, Ben Friedman "pleaded guilty to 3 of 73 felony charges of securities and tax frauds ... [He] bilked his investors out of more than $2.5 million and the state of Arizona out of more than $5 million in unpaid taxes." After a five year investigation into Friedman's wheelings and dealings, the Arizona State Department of Revenue concluded that "This is the largest tax prosecution involving personal income taxes the department has ever undertaken. All the Arizona personal income tax cases prosecuted to date would not equal what Mr. Friedman evaded." [SILVERMAN, A., 5-14-98]
In 2002, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) "accused [Reed] Slatkin [a Jew who became a Scientologist] of running a Ponzi scheme shortly after her filed for bankruptcy in May 2001. (A Ponzi scheme is a phony investment plan in which money provided by later investors is used to pay artificially high returns to the initial investors, with the goal of attracting as many investors as possible). Slatkin's allged scheme is said to be one of the biggest cases of investment fraud in American history." [WEING, G., 1-11-02]
Beginning in 1977, the FBI launched a secret investigation into the world of white-collar crime. Known as "Abscam," the investigation eventually led to a number of bribe-taking Congressmen. The central player recruited by the FBI sting operation to penetrate the world of white-collar fraud was an expert in the field, life-long swindler Mel Weinberg, "who had worked North America and five other continents, fleecing public officials, movie stars, dictators, generals, mobsters, political terrorists, and ordinary businessmen with democratic impartiality." [GREENE, 1981, p. 2] Weinberg was set up as a representative for a fake wealthy Arabian oil sheik, Abdul, and his networking for the FBI in the white collar underworld netted people from a number of backgrounds. In the Jewish community, these included Herman Weiss, Joe Meltzer, William Rosenberg ("a picture version of the affluent swindler") [GREENE, 1981, p. 9], Ben Cohen (a Miami lawyer "who once represented the Florida gambling syndicate,") [GREENE, 1981, p. 129], Marvin Rappaport ("who was anxious to supply Abdul with sex films"), [GREENE, 1981, p. 129], and Greg Katz ("who had become a millionaire through a series of corrupt deals with New Jersey Democratic officials spanning thirty years.") [GREENE, p. 162]
In Argentina and other Latin American countries in the late 1970s, notes Jerome Barromi, there were "a series of financial and political scandals involving prominent Jews." Among those charged was Mexican-based "powerful financier" David Gravier; family members him were also arrested and "accused of having laundered and recycled money from the Montoneros, acquired by bank robberies and kidnapping wealthy businessmen." (At least one prominent member in the revolutionary Montoneros organization, wanted by the government, was given refuge, on the basis of his Jewish credentials, in Israel). [SACHER, H., 1985, p. 299] "With several other Jewish investors, most of them Mexican, Gravier used his family bank to purchase controlling shares of the American Bank and Trust, a major New York financial institution. He then skimmed $50 million out of ABT, precipitating its collapse and the liquidation of $180 million of its deposits." Among the depositors were generals in Argentina's military. [SACHAR, H., 1985, p. 304] In 1977, "a new scandal erupted, the bankruptcy of the Jewish-owned (the Argentine Madanes family) aluminum factory, ALUAR." [BARROMI, p. 31] "Then came the [Jose Ber] Gelbar scandal," notes Jewish scholar Howard Sachar, "involving the first Jew to serve in a Peruvian cabinet. "Accused of graft in accumulating the fortune required for purchasing his vast investment [in ALUAR]," he fled to the United States. [SACHAR, H., 1985, p. 304]
In 2001, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency covered a panel discussion about the Jewish situation in Argentina, noting:
"According to Argentine Jewish expatriates in the audience, the Jewish leadership
in the country is entrenched, incompetent and corrupt. They also claimed that
the two Jewish-run banks were linked closely to a corrupt government and played
fast and loose with the community's money. When the banks failed, some $26
million in communal assets were lost overnight. 'My brother can get over losing
his money, but he cannot get over the fact that Jews betrayed other Jews, [Rabbi
Alfredo] Borodowski said." [JORDAN, M., 6-28-01]
In Australia, noted the 1994 American Jewish Yearbook, there were arrest warrants out for
"Abe Goldberg and a business associate, Katy Rochelle Boskowitz ...
over the multimillion dollar collapse in 1990 of the Linter textile and
investment group and alleged fraudulent borrowing and misconduct.
Boskowitz was arrested, but Goldberg remained in his native Poland ...
which has no extradition treaty with Poland. Robyn Greenberg,
convicted of fraud following the demise of a women's investment
and finance group in western Australia, was sentenced to 17 years in
prison. Some saw the harsh sentence as inspired by anti-Semitism.
Others by sexism." [SINGER/SELDIN, 1994, p. 373]
In the wake of the much-publicized Wall Street scandals, in 1987 the New York Jewish Week devoted a seven page "special report" entitled "Are We Facing a Crisis in Jewish Ethics?" to the theme of recurrent Jewish corruption. The newspaper noted that
"Four years ago, Jewish bankers in the Jewish state conspired in what
has become known as Israel's bank shares scandal. Of the four banks,
one was owned by Histradut [Israel's labor federation], one by the
Jewish Agency, and one by Mizrachi. Last year, a New York yeshiva
that was the seat for a grand rabbi was involved in a money-laundering
scheme for area businesses. Some of them were reported to be illegal.
Two officials of the school were indicted and convicted. This year a
prominent Wall Street figure and a lay leader of the New York Jewish
community pleaded guilty to insider trading violations on what is said
to be a massive scale. Several others have since been indicted -- and
most so far are Jewish. And then there are the various corruption
scandals currently plaguing New York: public officials betraying the
public trust by lining their own pockets -- and, or so it would seem,
almost all of them Jewish." [JEWISH WEEK, 5-15-87, p. 25]
Jewish names swirling in New York City scandals in the late 1980s included Alex Liberman, Stanley Friedman, Marvin Kaplan, Michael Lazar, Lester Shafran, Shelley Chevlowe, Victor Botnick, Jay Turoff, Melvin Lebetkin, Geoffrey Lindenauer, Charles Berg, Bernard Sandow (head of New York's Parking Violations Bureau) and Donald Manes (Queens Borough president), among others. [NEWFIELD/BARRETT, 1988; THE RECORD, 3-18-88, p. C22] Friedman (head of the Bronx Democratic Party), Lazar (City Transportation Administrator) and Shafran (Director of the City Parking Bureau) were convicted of racketeering (involving bribes, kickbacks, et al). Kaplan, who had a $22 million contract with New York City's parking bureau, was convicted of perjury. [LUBISCH, A., p. B3]
In 1998, the tide had not abated: the lament in the Canadian Jewish News was still the same: "In recent years a wave of financial scandals have shaken the Jewish community. How to conduct one's business ethnically is emerging as a central concern among rabbis and responsible community leaders." [CAN JEW NEWS, Business Ethics] In 1999, the same Jewish newspaper followed up with another article about this insistent subject, saying:
"Unfortunately, all too often (once is too often) we hear about ritually
observant Jews involved in white collar crimes: tax evasion, money
laundering, embezzlement and fraud. Perhaps even worse is the attitude
that one so often hears in casual conversation: 'I am only an employee,
so I can't write off personal expenses,' or 'Of course I pay my contractor
in cash,' thereby helping him evade his tax responsibility and thus stealing
from the honest taxpayer ... For some, the phenomenon is culturally
based ... [Because of historical discriminations against Jews] Jews had
to resort to cheating. This attitude was then carried over to our
democracies ... It does not require a very close examination of our
general business practices to realize that a serious problem exists...
We must continue to work until people stop and say: 'What a wonderful
Torah the Jewish people have. Look at the honesty and integrity of
of those who keep it." [KELMAN, J., 10-14-99, p. 9]
In 2001, 51 people were indicted for fraud worth millions of dollars in a rigging of McDonald's promotional games. "The scheme [involved] friends and close-knit family members, including a husband and wife." Jerome P. Jacobson, the scam ringleader and director of security for Simon Marketing Inc. (the firm contracted by McDonald's to run its promotional games: i.e., Monopoly and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?), "embezzled more than $20 million worth of winning McDonald's game pieces from his employer." Names of those indicted are hard to come by, but those listed with Jacobson by the Miami Herald were Bernard Weintraub and Adam Zucker. (Unindicted CEO of McDonalds? Jack Greenberg). Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that "the complaint alleges that Jacobson provided the winning game pieces to his friends and associates who acted as recruiters. These recruiters then solicited others who falsely and fraudulently represented that they were the legitmiate winners of the McDonald's games." [MIAMI HERALD, 12-9-01] [CNN, 8-22-01]
In the Jewish homeland, in 1994, Agence France Presse noted that "investigations, scandals, and trials involving securities dealers and the country's biggest banks have shaken Israel's financial markets as they've never been shaken before." [SCHATTNER] This included the arrests of Vladimir Saar and Arie Shafir for securities crimes, as well as the jailing of Amos Weiss, "one of Israel's leading securities dealers." [SCHATTNER] In 2001, the Isaeli newspaper Haaretz noted that
Three years later, in 1997, not much had changed in the name of "Jewish ethics" in the Jewish homeland. The Cleveland Jewish News began an article by stating that "Israel seems to be going through a golden age of corruption and criminality," and then listed those in the so-called "Bar-On affair," including Knesset member Arye Deri's trial for accepting bribes; building contractor David Appel's "cheating poor immigrants out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in government compensation"; the investigation into the Prime Minister's chief aide Avigdor Lieberman's falsification of documents; Dror Hoter Isha'i, head of the Israel Bar Association, and his trial for income tax evasion; and an investigation of Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert for falsification of election campaign documents. "But that's just in the Bar-On affair," notes the News, "the Israeli government is chockfull of other senior figures who have been accused of corruption and/or malfeasance." [DERFNER, Corruption, p. 8] These include police investigations of Shas Knesset member Rafael Pinchasi, Internal Security Minister Avigdor Kahalani, former Justice Minister Ya'acov Ne'eman, former Shas Knesset member Yair Levy, Labor Knesset member Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, and National Religious Party member Avner Shaki. "As for the mayors who have gone on trial for corruption and other sorts of crimes," notes the News, "the list is far too long to mention." [DERFNER, p. 8]
In 1994 the chairman of the Jewish Agency, Simcha Dinitz, had earlier joined the crowd when he was charged with fraudulent use of agency credit cards and other indiscretions, [HOFFMAN, D, p. A12] and in 1996 the Jewish National Fund weathered "a scandal over alleged financial mismanagement." [FORWARD, 3-21-97, p. 4] In 1997, an Israeli millionaire, Nahum Manbar, was convicted of treason for selling material to Iran that has value in the manufacture of poison gas. A member of Manbar's legal defense team was even found to have had simultaneous affairs with the judge on the case, the Israeli prime minister's media advisor, and a Shin Bet secret police officer. [BORGER, p. 16] That same year, Dudu Topaz, a major Israeli television personality, was exposed for the fraudulent system of his game show.
In 1999, Ofer Nimrodi, chairman of one of the largest newspapers in Israel, Ma'ariv, went to prison for four months "for electronically eavesdropping on his two competitors as well as on other media figures." A former employee, Rafi Pridan, was also reported "to have tapes of his old boss planning to murder the publishers of two rival newspapers, plus a private eye who once help put Nimrodi -- and Pridan -- in jail for wiretapping." [MAKOVSKY, p. 63]
Recent Israeli military-related scandals include a controversial over an early release date from jail for an air force general, Rami Dotan, who was imprisoned for embezzling $12 million, and Yehuda Gil, a senior Mossad [Israeli CIA] official, who was finally caught inventing -- continually for ten years -- information from an entirely fabricated spy in Syria. Enjoying the status of being a spy legend in Israel, Gil's total fictions nearly brought Israel to war with its Arab neighbor. [DAVIS, D, p. 10]
In 1999, the Associated Press reported that "several former officials of Israel's biggest bus company are suspected of accepting millions of dollars in bribes" [AP, Israel's] and in another story that "Israeli police have recommended that outgoing Justice Minister Tsahi Hanegbi be charged with corruption." [AP, Police] That same year too, "Israeli police arrested a local official of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party [Yehuda Kehati] -- a key ally of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu -- Saturday over allegations of fraud in connection with Monday's elections for parliament and prime ministership ... Fraud allegations are nothing new in Israeli politics." [AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, Ultra] A little while later came losing Prime Minister Netanyahu's turn: "Two months after bowing out of public life, Benyamin Netanyahu was back in the spotlight at the center of a police probe by the national fraud squad. Israel's former first couple are suspected of corruption, abuse of trust, attempting to suborn witnesses, and hindering the investigation, which centers on 100,000 dollars of renovations and other work at two Jerusalem homes." [WEGMAN] In 2001, the Washington Post noted that, with 1994 changes in Israeli election laws, "as a result many Israeli politicians resorted to a wide range of illegal and semi-legal ways to raise money, including setting up nonprofit organizations, whose records are shielded from public inquiry." [DOBBS, M., 2-21-01] That same year, after a building collapsed in Jerusalem killing 23 people, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz noted that
"Construction regulation in Jerusalem has been under a cloud since November
1999, when a huge corruption scandal exploded under the city's construction
regulation department. After a six month undercover operation, Jerusalem
poolice uncovered a ring of municipality officials who systematically
accepted hundreds of thousands of shekels in bribes from architects
and contractors." [AVRAHAMI, I., 5-27-01]
In 1999, in examining Israeli Likud Party fundraising, the Jewish Week noted that "almost $300,000 appears to have vanished somewhere between the United States and its Israeli charitable destination. And at least under $160,000 -- donated by right-wing philanthropist Dr. Irving Moskowitz to a fund-raiser linked to Likud -- was never reported to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, as required by law." [COHLER-ESSES, L., 2-19-99, p. 1] In 2001, "[Israeli] Histradut Teachers Union head Avraham Ben-Shabbat and his deputy Uri Groman, were placed under 14 days' house arrest by Tel Aviv District Court ... after both admitted to fraudulently obtaining academic degrees, then using them to receive higher pay." [SOMMER, A., 12-11-01]
And let us not forget the swindles befalling some of the immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union. In 1996, a class action suit was filed against Va'ad (the Ukrainian Jewish immigration umbrella organization), an immigration activist named Yosef Zisels, the Jewish Agency, and the Liason Bureau of the Israeli government. "According to the charges," notes the Jerusalem Post, "the immigrants gave money from their savings and the sale of their property to Zisels to transfer to Israel at the advice of emissaries working for the agency and bureau. However, they claim they were not paid the sums half a year later, as had been stipulated in the contract with the Va'ad." [TSUR, p. 6] Then came the 1999 investigations of "lawyers who reportedly cheated thousands of elderly Israelis out of more than half a billion dollars by offering to help them obtain German pensions. [i.e., Holocaust-era reparations]" [BARSHI]
In November of 1999 the Montreal Gazette noted that
"It was scandal, and lots of it, that truly occupies the country's [Israel's]
attention. There was a scandal of lust, scandal of greed, scandal
of corruption. There was a scandal involving the national soccer
team for losing a key match following pregame visits to a house
of ill repute. There was a scandal involving former prime minister
Benyamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sarah, accused of accepting
bribes and stealing valuable state gifts. And there was yeshiva
scandal aplenty. So much muck was being raked that the
newspaper Yediot Ahronot even ran a full-page scandal guide
on Friday, with boxes for every major affair, its suspects, its
allegations and the status of its investigation." [SONTAG, D.,
11-28-99, p. 17]
In 2000, nothing had changed. The Jewish Week headlined an article "Israel Sinking in Scandal Swamp: 'Light Unto Nations' Seen Losing Moral Bearing Amid Corruption, Fraud Probes." New scandals included those surrounding Israel's president, Ezer Weizman, who had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in a secret fund from French Jewish millionaire Edouard Sarousi, and Prime Minister Ehud Barak "who was questioned by state Comptroller Eliezer Goldberg last week about allegations that fictitious associations illegally pumped foreign contributions into his 1999 election campaign." [AIN, S., 1-28-2000, p. 1]
In 2002, Israeli MK (Member of Knesset/Parliament) Michael Kleiner complained that "World Jewish organizations are set to 'rake into their coffers' some $1 billion in unclaimed funds allocated by Swiss banks to compensate for assets from dormant Holocaust-era accounts ... Kleiner accused the [Israeli] government, along with Jewish organizations, of compliance in allowing the Swiss to avoid publishing the lists of bank account and insurance policyholders. The Jewish organizations have a conflict of interests, he said, since they cut a deal under which all unclaimed monies would go to them." [GILBERT, N., 1-15-02]
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