Sydney Morning Herald: Back in 2003, mining magnate Joseph Gutnick stared down a threat by his sister to refer their bitter legal dispute to a rabbinical court in Israel by invoking the famous Jewish teaching “dina demalchuta dina”, which means “the law of the land is the law”.
His sister Pnina Feldman and her husband, Rabbi Pinchus Feldman, had refused to accept a NSW court ruling in Gutnick’s favour over a $15 million loan. By invoking the Jewish halachic rule – one that considers law of a country binding, and, in certain cases, to be preferred over Jewish law – Rabbi Gutnick inflamed and divided his Hasidic community, which has long tried to keep disputes in house and outside of the court systems run by the state.
Now the same “law of the land” in which Gutnick has invested so much trust and money over the decades may just come back to bite him.
This week Fairfax Media revealed that “Diamond Joe” – a moniker earned through a series of investments in diamond and gold mines in the 1990s – had declared himself bankrupt, owing creditors $275 million. The bankruptcy came after the Supreme Court of Victoria upheld a ruling in Singapore that Mr Gutnick had made fraudulent misrepresentations in a deal with the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative that went wrong.
