ZGram - 9/21/2004 - "Is Bronfman about to be turfed?"

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ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

September 21, 2004

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Food for Thought:

[start]

WJC Rift Goes Public

Uriel Heilman
Special to the Jewish Times

SEPTEMBER 18, 2004
New York

After a decade of unprecedented successes promoting the interests of 
Jews around the world, the World Jewish Congress now is at risk of 
being torn apart by the very people behind those accomplishments.

In an internal squabble that has turned ugly and gone public, the 
president and chairman of the organization's board are pitted against 
the congress' senior vice president and executive vice president, and 
charges of corruption and financial irregularities by one side are 
being met with accusations of blackmail and coercion by the other.

The spat could spell trouble for the future of the 68-year-old 
congress at a time of major overhaul and uncertainty.

The World Jewish Congress already is in the midst of a comprehensive 
restructuring process, which began a year ago. And it is set to 
choose a new president in the coming months to replace its president 
of 24 years, Edgar Bronfman, who also is the organization's 
single-largest financial supporter.

Charges that top officials at the organization may have tried to hide 
$1.2 million in a Swiss bank account, that the Jewish Agency for 
Israel made an unusual $1.5 million payment to the congress, and that 
a senior lay leader at the congress is orchestrating a campaign of 
disinformation, defamation and intimidation in an attempt to seize 
power could affect the organization's reputation and future.

People involved with the organization expressed concern that the 
latest conflict could impair the group in its worldwide fight against 
anti-Semitism, Holocaust restitution negotiations and Catholic-Jewish 
ties - all signature issues for the congress.

If the leadership of the congress is found to be morally compromised, 
it could hamper the congress' negotiations with European governments 
over compensation for Nazi-era crimes, they said.

Furthermore, noted one observer, "Any negative perception of the way 
the organization is run, even if not considered a scandal, could have 
a negative effect on the willingness of the charitable public to 
contribute to that cause."

If the group experiences a downturn in its fund raising from the 
general public, which accounts for more than 75 percent of the WJC's 
budget, it could handicap the congress' ability to fulfill its 
mission of defending and advocating for Jews around the world.

"This public spat causes damage to the Jewish people, not only the 
World Jewish Congress," said Yoram Dinstein, chairman of the group's 
task force on reform and restructuring and a former president of Tel 
Aviv University.

Dinstein, echoing the sentiments of Jewish officials at the congress 
and outside it, said any questions about irregularities should have 
been dealt with internally by the congress' leadership, not aired 
publicly, thereby sullying the group's reputation - possibly 
needlessly.

"There's a huge paradox here," he said, recounting the congress' 
successes in recent months promoting conferences on anti-Semitism in 
Brussels, Berlin and the United Nations; convening a conference of 
cardinals in Argentina to talk about Jewish issues, and meeting with 
political leaders worldwide to discuss matters of Jewish concern.

"You'd think everybody would stand up and salute each other; instead 
they're sparring. I don't understand," Dinstein said.

The feud became public in recent days when top officials at the 
congress discussed with the media allegations of financial 
irregularities at the organization.

Israel Singer, chairman of the WJC's governing board, said he talked 
publicly about the allegations to refute charges that Isi Leibler, 
senior vice president of the congress, already had begun peddling to 
the media and others outside the organization in a lengthy memorandum.

"People were calling me to tell me" about Leibler's memo, Singer 
said. "Important people in important places that had the document in 
their hands were calling me."

Leibler, an Australian who made aliyah in 1999, said he went public 
with his 12-page memo because the congress had ignored his call for 
an independent, external audit of the group's finances - and because 
Singer had gone to the media pre-emptively in an attempt to discredit 
him.

In his memo, Leibler alleges that Singer has been unilaterally 
directing the congress' funds and expenses; that there is no detailed 
annual statement of income and expenditure at the congress, and that 
Singer was keeping a secret pension fund, totaling more than $1.2 
million, in an undisclosed bank account in Geneva, Switzerland.

Singer, who worked at the WJC for about 30 years and rose to the 
position of secretary general, retired in 2002 and was elected to his 
current lay position. He receives an annual pension of about 
$226,000, according to WJC officials.

He has also played a lead role in restitution negotiations and is the 
president of the Claims Conference.

Pinchas Shapiro, deputy director at the WJC, said Leibler's memo is 
"fraught with factual inaccuracies;" that Leibler knows there is 
nothing nefarious about the $1.2 million account; that the 
organization undergoes an external audit every year, and that 
Leibler's purpose in raising the questions is an attempt to discredit 
Singer and Bronfman's stewardship of the congress and seize power at 
the organization.

"This is not a fight about the 12-page memo. Leibler's memo is only a 
vehicle he wanted to use to seize the World Jewish Congress," Shapiro 
said. "He's attempting to hijack what I consider the most venerable 
Jewish organization in the world."

Leibler denies that.

"I have no interest of the presidency of the World Jewish Congress. 
I'm interested simply in restructuring and creating a democratic 
body," Leibler said.

The feuding comes at a time of crossroads for the organization, both 
in terms of direction and leadership. The World Jewish Congress 
spearheaded the fight for Holocaust restitution around the world, 
leading to billions of dollars of funds for survivors and their 
heirs. With that issue largely negotiated, observers say, the group 
is searching for new priorities.

At the same time, Bronfman, 75, whose financial support helped revive 
the organization in the 1980s, has said he will step down as 
president in 2006. The congress has not yet begun considering 
successor candidates.

Today Bronfman contributes about 20 to 25 percent of the 
organization's annual $10 million budget. The balance comes from some 
400,000 North American donors, organizational officials said.

Liebler, who has sparred with Bronfman before, mostly over political 
differences, said those donors "have a right to fiscal transparency."

"I'm dealing with a series of issues that certainly raise the 
question that there may have been financial irregularities of an 
extraordinarily serious nature," he said. "There's an absolute 
imperative for the World Jewish Congress to have an independent, 
external audit."

But confidential e-mails obtained by JTA, which were sent in late 
August by Leibler to Dinstein, who was overseeing the congress' 
restructuring effort, seem to show that Leibler was willing to forego 
his demand for "a comprehensive full investigation and audit of the 
past five years" if the congress complied with several other demands: 
making Leibler a member of the board of a WJC institute, creation of 
a budget for Leibler's international activities and control over 
certain personnel decisions in the congress' Israel office.

Leibler says those e-mails were "purloined" from his computer, but he 
did not deny their veracity.

Also in late August, Leibler met with Israel's minister of Diaspora 
affairs, Natan Sharansky, to raise his questions about the congress' 
operations. A Sharansky adviser called the meeting "inappropriate," 
and some Jewish officials point to that meeting as evidence of 
Leibler's alleged intent to bully Bronfman and Singer into giving him 
more power in the organization.

In a telephone interview with JTA from Jerusalem, Leibler initially 
denied meeting any Israeli government officials to discuss the matter.

"Any insinuation that I would have wanted to meet with a government 
official is outrageous and obscene," Leibler told JTA. "The last 
thing I would want to do would be to bring disrepute to the body. If 
anybody is insinuating that I have met or spoken with any outside 
party, it is outrageous. I would regard that as defamation."

Vera Golovensky, an adviser to Sharansky on Diaspora affairs, said 
she was with the minister when Leibler met with him.

"It was our assumption that we would be discussing anti-Semitism," 
Golovensky said. "When Mr. Leibler showed up for the meeting, he 
expressed and talked about his concern about irregularities, which he 
claimed are taking place in the World Jewish Congress. When Mr. 
Sharanksy heard that, he strongly urged Mr. Leibler to take these 
allegations about irregularities that he's so concerned with to the 
organization itself."

When confronted with the account of the Sharansky meeting, Leibler 
said, "If you were talking about Sharansky, he's one of my close 
friends."

Leibler acknowledged that he had met with the minister but said, 
"There was absolutely no involvement with the minister beyond 
discussing aspects of Jewish corporational life and Jewish Diaspora 
life."

On Aug. 30, not long after that meeting, Bronfman sent a memo to the 
congress' member communities vowing to "rebut any and all attacks" on 
the organization, saying, "We shall not countenance nor shall we 
condone coercion, corruption or self-interest within our ranks."

Bronfman also rendered powerless the three-person operations 
committee that ran the congress's day-to-day affairs - consisting of 
Singer, Leibler and Elan Steinberg, executive vice president of the 
congress - and replaced it with a nine-person steering committee 
headed by Stephen Herbits, whom Bronfman described as his right-hand 
man at the Seagram Company, where Bronfman was chairman.

The move significantly diluted Leibler's power, and eliminated 
Steinberg from the committee altogether.

Meanwhile, Franklyn Snitow, a lawyer for Bronfman and Singer, in a 
Sept. 3 letter to the general counsel of the WJC, warned that Leibler 
and Steinberg were making unfounded accusations about irregularities 
in an attempt to "secure their respective personal positions at the 
expense of the congress."

Steinberg, who left his post as executive vice president at the 
congress two years ago but returned a year later as a senior adviser, 
declined JTA's requests for comment.

The letter expressed deep concern about the public perception of the 
congress should the accusations, "no matter how baseless, linger in 
the minds of the public, long after they are reported as unfounded."

"Mr. Leibler's communications conjure an environment of mystery and 
intrigue about an account which simply represents a proposed pension 
to be received by Mr. Singer, of which Mr. Leibler was aware."

Minutes of a WJC Operations Committee meeting of July 18 demonstrate 
Leibler's awareness of the bank account in Geneva, and its subsequent 
transfer to New York. Congress officials say the account was in 
Geneva because that was the one place the congress had a pension plan 
in place for its Geneva office employees, and that nobody was trying 
to cover up existence of the account.

But Avi Beker, former secretary general of the congress, told JTA he 
was never told about the account when he was at the congress.

"I was never aware that the money existed," Beker said. "I heard 
rumors only after I left. I never saw anything about it."

In his memo, Leibler says the $1.2 million account previously had not 
been disclosed, and that he only found out about it after Daniel 
Lack, a lawyer and longtime congress staff member in Geneva, wrote to 
him about its existence. Leibler also says that Singer said that the 
money was earmarked for his pension and came from the Jewish Agency.

Once questions were raised about the account, the money was 
transferred to New York so WJC officials in New York could keep a 
closer eye on the money.

Singer denies that the money was earmarked for anything specific, 
though he says there was consideration for using it to make pension 
payments to a couple of people at the congress.

The Jewish Agency says it made a $1.5 million payment to the congress 
in 2001, but that it was not for anything specific and it was up to 
the congress to determine how to use it.

In 1998, the Jewish Agency had stopped making its $500,000 annual 
contribution to the congress - a feature of the historic partnership 
between the agency and the congress.

In 2001, after negotiation with the WJC, the Jewish Agency made a 
compromise and transferred $1.5 million as a final settlement for all 
previous commitments, said Michael Jankelowitz, a Jewish Agency 
spokesman, who said the agency "no longer makes allocations to major 
organizations."

Bronfman did not return JTA's calls requesting comment, but Yoram 
Dori, an Israeli public relations executive who is representing 
Bronfman and Singer, said Bronfman "doesn't think that every day, 
again and again, he has to defend himself against a man who wants 
power and only power."

The brouhaha at the congress has upset many members of the WJC, 
particularly the congress' branches around the world.

"Adults could handle this differently," said Mati Droblas, chairman 
of the Israel branch of the WJC and a member of the group's executive 
committee.

"Why didn't he ask the executive to appoint a committee?" he said of 
Leibler and his questions. "The press won't solve the problem."

Droblas said the congress' executive committee will meet Sept. 20 and 
likely will consider ways to eject Leibler from the congress. 
Steinberg, who is seen as an ally of Leibler, also could be at risk 
of ejection from the congress, where he has a salaried position.

"I think that the executive has to meet and decide if there is room 
for a person like this on the executive," Droblas said of Leibler.

In Paris, the European Jewish Congress said it "distances itself from 
Isi Liebler" and "rejects all accusations based on rumors circulating 
in the press undermining the leadership of the WJC."

Serge Cwajgenbaum, secretary general of the European Jewish Congress, 
a WJC constituent body, said, "These unfounded rumors are only doing 
damage to world Jewry."


[END]

<http://www.jewishtimes.com/News/4189.stm>http://www.jewishtimes.com/News/4189.stm