Buried Skunk, Page 2
from Counterpunch
The Kidney Broker and the Money Laundering Rabbis
By SAUL LANDAU
I thought of Cousin Harry when I read about the July 21 bust of five New York and New Jersey orthodox rabbis along with scores of New Jersey officials. Like the clean shaven, dapper and secular Harry, these long bearded and black garbed religious leaders and a ring of politicians, had become professional scammers. They engaged in massive money-laundering and illegal organ trading operations in addition to selling fake Gucci and Prada handbags and anything else. The Sopranos-style network operated with Brooklyn and New Jersey rabbis washing tens of millions of dollars through charities which they controlled.
The arrested included mayors of Hoboken, Secaucus and Ridgefield, two state legislators, the Jersey City Council president and its deputy mayor. The rabbis forwarded some of their ill gotten gains to Israeli yeshivas linked to the super-duper Orthodox Shas Party and its uber Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.
Federal officials also discovered that some of the money laundered by these supposed pillars of Jewish law and ethics came from the sale of human kidneys by a Brooklyn orthodox Jew named Levi Izhak Rosenbaum.
This kick back to politicians, illegal organ sale rackets and rabbis laundering illicit dough -- supposedly to support their ultra orthodox kin in Israel – offered new twists in Talmudic logic. In this tangled narrative the leading money laundering suspect, Rabbi Eliyahu Ben-Haim’s good buddy in Israel, Rabbi David Yosef, is also Shas jefe Ovadia Yosef’s son. They belonged to an advanced Talmudic studies center in Jerusalem headed by Ovadia Yosef’s family. Ben-Haim got rich Jews in New York to bankroll the institute. Because of the scandal, Haaretz reporter Zvi Zrahiya concludes, “these donations are expected to cease.” He also reports that un-named banks were also apparently involved in the scandal. (Haaretz, 26/07/2009) Shocking!
44 Charged by U.S. in New Jersey Corruption Sweep
from The New York Times
Photo by Louis Lanzano/Associated Press
Published: July 23, 2009
A two-year corruption and international money-laundering investigation stretching from the Jersey Shore to Brooklyn to Israel and Switzerland culminated in charges against 44 people on Thursday, including three New Jersey mayors, two state assemblymen and five rabbis, the authorities said.
The case began with bank fraud charges against a member of an insular Syrian Jewish enclave centered in a seaside town. But when that man became a federal informant and posed as a crooked real estate developer offering cash bribes to obtain government approvals, it mushroomed into a political scandal that could rival any of the most explosive and sleazy episodes in New Jersey’s recent past.
It was replete with tales of the illegal sales of body parts; of furtive negotiations in diners, parking lots and boiler rooms; of nervous jokes about “patting down” a man who turned out to indeed be an informant; and, again and again, of the passing of cash — once in a box of Apple Jacks cereal stuffed with $97,000.
“For these defendants, corruption was a way of life,” Ralph J. Marra Jr., the acting United States attorney in New Jersey, said at a news conference. “They existed in an ethics-free zone.” continued
Not A Zionist
Humorous Rabbi
Not A Zionist Gilad Atzmon
Not A Zionist
Not A Zionist
Hope nothing is missing
Gilad Atzmon on Israel