Hirchson
צילום: עטא עוויסאת
Hirchson behind hiring of $700,000 PR man
Suspended finance minister hired a PR consultant for March of Living charity at a cost of over $700,000; consultant told New York Jewish Week that work was only ‘minor activity’
Suspended finance minister Abraham Hirchson urged the March of the Living charity to hire a New York consultant at a cost of over $700,000 for work that the consultant described as “minor activity”.
According to a report to appear in Friday’s New York Jewish Week, the consultant, Curtis Hoxter, was paid $709,000 over a three-year period starting in 2003. In return for this money, he told the Jewish Week that he helped with fundraising and contacts. But when asked for details, the 85-year-old lawyer replied: “I have no idea. I have no recollection. It was just something I assisted on. I prefer not to go into any details. It was not a major activity.”
The March of the Living, which organizes annual trips to Auschwitz to strengthen Jewish identity among Jewish teenagers, is funded by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the Claims Conference.
The president of the Claims Conference is former World Jewish Congress leader Israel Singer who, according to the Jewish Week, was instructed in 2003 by the WJC to stop funneling unauthorized WJC payments to Hoxter — payments that had by then totaled $657,600.
During this period, according to the Jewish Week, Singer, along with his attorney Zvi Barak, who is also a business partner of Hirchson’s son, Ofer, was negotiating to join Hoxter’s Manhattan public relations firm as a partner.
Singer was forced out of the World Jewish Congress in March after being removed from positions of financial responsibility there in 2006 — the year an investigation by then-New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer found Singer and his chief aide, Elan Steinberg, responsible for financial mismanagement of the group
Hoxter paid 'massive, unexplained rewards'
Ya’acov Weinrot, Hirchson’s lawyer, confirmed to the Jewish Week that it was his client who brought Hoxter to March of Living. But, said Weinrot, Hirchson “did not realize his salary would be so big.”Last week, the Claims Conference announced its in-house financial controller, Yigal Molad, was launching an “in-depth audit” of grants it had made to March of the Living in response to the Israeli police investigation of Hirchson and “recent allegations in the media” concerning suspicions of theft and fraud by Hirchson
Singer said in a statement: “I’m not involved in allocating Claims Conference funds and certainly have no say or interest in any consultants that grant recipients might choose to hire.”
Former WJC governing board chairman Isi Leibler, who first discovered Singer’s payments to Hoxter at the WJC and raised alarms about Singer’s financial practices there, told the Jewish Week, “The March of the Living paid Hoxter massive, yet unexplained rewards while being funded by yet another group led by Singer can only be described as unconscionable and obscene.
“Claims Conference officials have the obligation of overseeing and ensuring that grants to organizations like the March of the Living are properly employed. In the absence of any rational explanation, their failure to do so is an indictment, and every effort must now be employed to recoup these funds.”
