May 8, 2009

`Do as I say not as I — never mind’

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized / Rob Eshman

Uri Dromi’s latest Miami Herald Column:

Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, has raised some concerns because of his hawkish positions and blunt language. However, European foreign ministers who met him this week were happily surprised by his pragmatism. It seems like a rehearsal for his future meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Here is my guess of how that meeting might go.

HC: Mr. Lieberman, so good to see you at last.

AL: Indeed, madam secretary; you met every Arab [expletive] before you made time to see me.

HC: I love your directness. We need this kind of frank talk once in a while. Especially here in Washington.

AL: I know, you hypocrites are too used to double-talk and [expletive] to the Arabs.

HC: OK, big mouth. Tell me what is your prime minister’s peace plan.

AL: Bibi Netanyahu? I don’t know about him. I don’t think he knows himself. This is why he first sent President Shimon Peres to meet with you guys, to find out what you’re up to.

HC: That’s simple. We want you to freeze the settlements.

AL: The only thing I freeze, madam secretary, is my vodka. By the way, I happen to have here—

HC: No, put that bottle away, right now, Mr. Lieberman. Please, let’s get serious.

AL: But I am serious, this is the finest vodka you can get. you can call me Iwet.

HC: OK, Mr. Lieberman, Iwet, and you can call me Hillary. Now, what is your take on the recent U.N. report, about you Israelis using excessive force in Gaza?

AL: [Expletive!] This is the only way to deal with those SOBs, if you’ll excuse my French. See how we dealt with them in Chechnya.

HC: Chechnya? I thought the Russians did it.

AL: Of course, of course. I was just saying, you need to be tough with all those bandits.

HC: Still, I’m not sure this is the right way—

AL: Why not? For sure, it was always the American way. If force doesn’t work, use more force. Look at Fallujah, for example.

HC: That is different.

AL: Why? You leveled whole neighborhoods and killed civilians.

HC: Yes, but we are Americans. When we do it, we do it for noble causes.

AL: Like what?

HC: Like making the world a safer place.

AL: I see, and when Israel uses force, it’s not for noble causes?

HC: No, you’re too small to have noble causes. I mean, no, don’t get me wrong, Iwet, we have the highest admiration for you guys. Anyway, all this belongs in the past. We have since dropped the Bush policies toward the Muslim world, and now we are advancing the new Obama approach, that of Engagement.

AL: Exactly. I wanted to discuss this nonsense with you. How can you be so naive, and believe all those liars?

HC: Why not believe them? How can you tell when they are lying anyway?

AL: It’s simple. Whenever they move their lips they are lying.

HC: So when (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad says he wants to destroy Israel, he is actually lying?

AL: That’s a dirty trick, Hillary. Look, it’s simple. Muslims and Arabs are always lying, even when they are telling the truth. Israelis are always telling the truth. Period.

HC: In that case, when you cursed the Egyptian president and threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam, you really meant it?

AL: I was told you’re difficult. These were only words, Hillary. You know how it is. Remember, when you were campaigning against Barack Obama, and you said nasty things about him, and now you’re working for him.

HC: Well, this is different. You see—

AL: Or your husband. Remember what he said about that nice Jewish girl, “I did not have—‘’

HC: Now, this is ridiculous—

AL: Why? I tell you, I loved his finger work, on television, ‘‘I did not blah blah . . .’’ So you see, Hillary, people say words and do the opposite.

HC: Does this mean that all your warmongering is only rhetoric, and when the time comes, you’ll be ready to make peace?

AL: Make peace with whom?

HC: With the Palestinians, of course.

AL: Oh, not so fast. First I want to make peace with the Dutch.

HC: The Dutch? But you don’t have a quarrel with the Dutch.

AL: Not yet, but give me a chance.

HC: I love that, Iwet. You’re impossible. By the way, about that vodka . . .

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Madoff trustee sues Ezra Merkin; Chais responds to his investors

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized / Brad A. Greenberg

Well, that didn’t take long. Less than a week after suing Beverly Hills money manager Stanley Chais, the court-appointed trustee in the Bernard Madoff investment scandal filed a $500 million lawsuit against J. Ezra Merkin.

It’s safe to say that this lawsuit did not come as a surprise to Merkin, who quickly emerged as one of Madoff’s primary fund feeders. Here’s the story:

According to the complaint, Mr. Merkin steered more than $1 billion into Mr. Madoff’s hands since 1995 through three large private hedge funds, Ascot Partners, Ariel Fund and Gabriel Capital. The Ariel fund is not related to Ariel Investments of Chicago.

Since 2002, Mr. Merkin’s funds withdrew at least $494 million from the Madoff scheme — returns that a financially sophisticated investor like Mr. Merkin “knew or should have known” were fraudulent, the lawsuit contends.

Among the warning signs ignored by Mr. Merkin were at least 500 instances in the last 10 years when his Madoff account statements showed large blocks of stock bought or sold at prices that did not match the stock’s trading range for the day when the transactions supposedly occurred.

Under federal and state law, the trustee can sue to recover cash withdrawn under those circumstances anytime during the six years before Mr. Madoff’s arrest. Last week, a similar lawsuit was filed to recover just more than $800 million withdrawn from Madoff accounts during that period by trust funds and private accounts managed by Stanley Chais, a prominent Los Angeles philanthropist.

I followed up on the Chais complaint for this week’s Jewish Journal. (You can read all 51 pages here.) Here’s an excerpt from my story:

Robert Chew, 55, said on Monday that he hadn’t known his money was invested with Madoff until Chais called to say it was all gone, but said he didn’t suspect his money manager was complicit in the fraud. Still, Chew was angry with Chais for having, Chew believes, misled his clients.

“We never knew exactly what he was doing, but he had been doing it for 40 years and very successfully,” said Chew, who moved with his wife Sarah Mandell from Los Angeles to Colorado and entered retirement two years ago. “We thought he was the guy making the trades, and he led us to believe that. At parties we would ask ‘How’s the market?’ ‘Oh, it’s good, it’s bad, it’s getting tougher to make trades.’ He led us to believe he was the genius and his people were the geniuses behind all this. When really all he did was collect the money and move it on to someone else. And he was getting a 25 percent cut for this.”

I was unable to speak with Chais for this story. His main defense, through his attorney and when he spoke with The Journal in mid-December, has been that he and his family lost a substantial amount of money, and that surely he would have protected his cash if he had been wise to Madoff’s fraud.

Wednesday I received a one-page letter Chais sent to his investors. (You can download it here.) It reiterates that theme:

Finally, the notion that I was aware of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme is devoid of any common sense. Obviously if I knew, or even suspected, that it was all a fraud, I would not have kept my money, my family’s money, and my parters’ money with Madoff. As you know, I held a very significant amount of money in each of the partnerships, and like so many of you, I have lost virtually everything because of this mess.

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