The money in question [over $1 million] was transfered from New York to Geneva and later to London, by way of Israel, with no explanation.

---

Jerusalem, Friday, September 10, 2004

 

WJC's Leibler: Bronfman wants to fire me over demand for audit

By Daphna Berman

World Jewish Congress Vice President Isi Leibler (right) said yesterday that the organization's president, Edgar Bronfman, rejected his demand that an independent audit firm review questionable money transfers within the WJC - a move, he said, that ultimately led to Bronfman's efforts to have him removed from his post.

Leibler told Haaretz yesterday that senior WJC officials, including Bronfman and chairman Israel Singer, had worked "vigorously" against his request to clarify a number of "strange" financial transactions.

His remarks came a day after Haaretz reported that moves were afoot to unseat both Leibler, who resides in Israel, and another senior WJC official, Elan Steinberg. Leibler dismissed those who say he represents a right-wing minority that is trying to take over the organization, calling the accusation a "diversion" from the financial issues at hand.

"There was $1.2 million dollars that just turned up in a Swiss bank, and I'm not suggesting that it's anything illegal, but I want sufficient explanation as to what it was doing and why it wasn't disclosed to us in the [WJC] operations committee," he said yesterday. The money in question was transfered from New York to Geneva and later to London, by way of Israel, "with no explanation," Leibler said. "There is sufficient information that makes it mandatory that an organization of this nature have an independent audit... I was never made privy to the financial expenditures of the organization which is somewhat unusual."

Leibler said that Bronfman was particularly reluctant to make the WJC more financially transparent, because "if you pay for an organization yourself... your inclination is to run it the way you want." He insisted, though, that the WJC is "no longer a private company" under Bronfman's financial leadership, but one that "belongs to the Jewish people."

He also accused Bronfman and Singer of trying to represent the entire organization when, earlier this year, they asked former Labor Party MK Avraham Burg to become secretary general of the WJC without consulting the organization's board. "Bronfman is not accustomed to running an organization the way most organizations are run," Leibler said.

Since the senior vice president of the WJC is elected by the organization's general assembly, he added, only the assembly has the right to remove him from the post.

A letter sent last week by a New York law firm to the WJC's general counsel, Stanley Chesley, stated that Bronfman had undertaken a process to modernize the WJC, and that Steinberg and Leibler have "attempted to undermine his efforts by making unfounded accusations of irregularities which reflect upon the integrity of senior World Jewish Congress officials."

Website note: Billionaire Edgar Bronfman (right) is stated in the Jewish press to have been one of the major financial contributors to Deborah Lipstadt, paying the millions of dollars that were used to finance her neutral expert witnesses to testify as they did in Mr Irving's libel action against her.

... on this website

 

 Our dossier on the origins of anti-Semitism

 

 

Schindler, the Leiblers, and the Keeping of Lists

World Jewish Congress and Adolf Eichmann's 1944 "Jews for trucks" offer

Bronfman, Leibler exchange bitter words over Israel

A Talk by Edgar M. Bronfman: "Jews and Justice"

Finkelstein lays into Wiesenthal, Bronfman and Eizenstat (in German)

Financial Post: Ottawa tries to cover up who's behind the $800m tax waiver

 Bronfman family's mystery tax break faces Canadian trial

Bronfman linked to Israeli probe

 Dec 2001: Judge scolds tax officials, but crusader loses case

 

  WJC defends fund raiser as appropriate 'thank you'

  Ottawa tries to cover up whos behind the $800M tax waiver -- the Edgar Bronfman family -- Revenue Canada manoeuvre may nix a trial

  Forward, New York: Isi Leibler seeks reprimand -- Irving's Case Getting Aid from Aussie

  World Jewish Congress - Edgar Bronfman, Elan Steinberg, Isi Leibler, call eachother names
"One Jewish leader familiar with the work of the World Jewish Congress suspects that . . . lawyers did a lot of investigating into the finances of the World Jewish Congress."

  Real History and the Canadian Gangster World

  Israeli police are considering investigating Canadian businessman Charles Bronfman over donations he made to a group suspected of illegally funding the 1999 election campaign of former prime minister Ehud Barak.

  Edgar Bronfmans unashamed 1998 boast that in Switzerland we gave them an excuse for antisemitism