Noam Sharvit of Globes reports:
Officers from Israel Police Central Region Fraud Unit and Israel Tax Authority investigators have arrested the director of Chabad Youth Organization in Israel, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Ahronov, the nonprofit organization’s (NPO) accountant, and one of its authorized signatories, on suspicion of embezzlement amounting to tens of millions shekels and tax fraud running into hundreds of millions of shekels. The four men are suspected of theft, fraudulent receiving, and money laundering, in which leading businessmen are also thought to be involved.
Ahronov was arrested this morning on return from a fund raising campaign abroad, as detectives raided the NPO’s offices in Kfar Chabad. At web posting, the four men were due to appear at the Ramla Magistrates Court for a remand hearing.
Police began an undercover inquiry into Chabad Youth Organization following a complaint by the Registrar of Nonprofit Organizations about irregularities in the NPO’s management. The inquiry revealed that funds intended as donations were transferred to private accounts held by the director and others. It was also discovered that receipts issued for donations were not entered on the NPO’s books.
Adv. Gideon Fisher, the lawyer representing Ahronov and Lubavitch-Chabad, said the investigators were trying to blame the NPO’s officers for fraud that they themselves had uncovered. "The inquiry began following a lawsuit the NPO filed against its former treasurer, in which it claimed he embezzled more than NIS 30 million. In his defense, the treasurer sought to divert attention from his own actions by making absurd claims in an attempt to smear the NPO’s director and Chabad leaders."
As I wrote just over one year ago:
Lubavitch Youth (Tzach) in Israel is embroiled in a lawsuit over more than $3 million in missing funds. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Aranow, the head of Tzach, accuses his former CFO Yosef Segal of stealing the money. Segal accuses Aronow of taking al that money – and much more, of croynism and illegal payments to friends and family, and of stealing money specifically earmarked for Children of Chernobyl. Tzach gets about $20 million annually from the Israeli government alone.
Aronow refused to go to police, he claims, because of mesira, the prohibition against informing. This could be true. But the government refused to clear Tzach’s nonprofit status until the police were called and the thefts investigated. Aronow refused to make that call so the government did it for him. Knowing how readily Aronow has resorted to secular couts and authorities in the past, I think Aronow and his henchmen are dirty, and have done everything Segal claims – and more. Which is the real reason Aronow would not call the police. Segal himself may have stolen money – or he may be innocent. Time will tell.
I think time has told and Aronow is going down.
Zevulun Zevulun emails me:
Kehos book store is the Lubavitch Publication house run by Mr. Yehuda Krinsky who…is taking fellow Lubavitchers to court and to fight the Messianics who refuse to recognize Mr. Krinsky as the new Lubavitcher Rebbe.
This brings to light once more the scandal which hit all Israel and US newspapers several months ago, when the Head of Lubavitch Youth organization in Israel, Mr. Aronov was arrested and indicted by the Israeli government on charges of Money Laundering. Israeli top officials then said that there was likely a US connection and many suspect that that connection is Mr. Yehuda Krinsky of the Luvavitch arm in the USA, in N.Y.While Mr. Krinsky has many millions to pay lawyers millions of dollars yearly in his failed attempt to squash his messianic apposition to his totalitarian dictatorship of Lubavitch, people speculate that he hesitates to use his millions to Bail Out the Lubavitch publication house from it’s 2 million dollars bankruptcy failure because Mr. Krinsky would rather that the publication house be forced to close down so that his connection with Aronov in Israel will not come to light.
