Bernie Madoff: Bernie's ties to Ehud Olmert
In today's NY Post, PageSix reports that the author of a new Bernie bio, Jerry Oppenheimer, thinks Bernie was doing business with organized crime including the Israeli mob.
LOL - I don't know about the Israeli mob but Bernie is definitely linked to Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister who resigned last year amid corruption charges. Among other things, Olmert was charged with accepting cash from one of Bernie's customers, Morris (Moshe) Talansky. (To be fair, the outcome of the war with Lebanon didn't help Olmert either.)
Talansky, a former rabbi with business interests in an Israeli satellite company, had been the executive director of the American Committee For Shaare Zedek Hospital. The committee which raised money for Shaare Hospital in Jerusalem had several Madoff accounts although it is not clear if the hospital lost money in the scandal. Talansky claimed he lost a million dollars.
The Olmert investigation was opened in January 2007. If the Israeli authorities investigated Talansky's finances, they may very well have looked into Bernie's business.
In July 14, 2008 post on NY Magazine's Intel blog, Steve Fishman wrote that he had read transcripts of secretly recorded meetings and phone calls in which Talansky participated. In one meeting, Talansky referred to "Bernie" who Talansky said was very unhappy about losing money in a business deal:
"Talansky, who one participant at the meetings described as a "wild man," also introduced a mysterious character named Bernie into discussions. Bernie, he said, had lost a lot of money in the deal. No one ever met Bernie. But Talansky, Bernie's confidant, let the rabbis know that Bernie was not someone to be trifled with. The transcripts make clear that the rabbis were afraid. For good reason: Bernie apparently wanted to kill one of the participants before Christmas."
"Bernie" as in Bernard L. Madoff?
Bernie had other, less direct, ties to Talansky and Olmert. Leon Flax, a director of Bernie's London company, was a major donor to Shaare Hospital through Shaare Zedek UK. Flax's brother and sister-in-law, also Madoff customers, accompanied Bernie on a 2004 Swiss ski trip along with a dozen other of Bernie's friends and associates.
An August 2008 BMIS American Express bill provided by the bankruptcy trustee shows Peter Madoff and his wife booking round trip tickets from Italy to Israel in mid-September just as the proverbial shit hit the fan.
Hmm...
Hey dashboard readers, here's one to rec before the spam gets it!!
July 24, 2009 1:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
US ex-pat Gary Klesch 62 (of Klesch & Co, formerly of Quadrex Securities) the London-based "vulture fund king of European distressed debt trading" is pictured and name-checked twice in an article about Madoff's London operation by Mark Hollingsworth and M.A. Nicholas in the July 2009 issue of Tatler magazine (www.tatler.co.uk) - a Conde Nast London Vanity Fair-prototype. Klesch was, according to long-time Madoff London employee Julia Fenwick, the only outsider Madoff entertained in his London office boardroom. According to Fenwick. he was also a regular recipient of hospitality from the Madoffs when they stayed on the Cote d'Azur. What a nice chap to have as a friend ! I wonder what he knows? Maybe he can assist the comatose London official investigation. p.s. the Tatler feaure also includes a fabulous picture of Bernie at Mirabelle restaurant with a splendidly flakey fortune-teller.
July 25, 2009 7:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, FP. I'd really like to read the article but I can't find it online. You wouldn't happen to have it in electronic format by any chance would you?
Re Klesch - I think Gary Klesch is the Allan Gary Klesch who signed a promissiory note of $1 million due to Bernie in 1999. The note is part of the list of assets forfeited by Bernie in a court order.
Bernie had a habit of calling gifts of cash as loans which , I suppose, was to help the recipient beat income tax on the money. I wonder what Klesch did for him.
July 25, 2009 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink