Chabad Officials Under Investigation for Embezzlement

Israeli police arrested Monday the Chabad Youth Organization’s chairman, its chief accountant, and several other people suspected of embezzling millions of shekels, through tax evasion, and laundering money for several businessmen.

The covert investigation has been going on for eight months.

Chabad is a non-profit organization with an annual budget of 30 million Israeli shekels. Twenty percent of its funding comes from the state; the remainder comes predominantly from donations.

Police Commander Avi Mantzur, who is heading the investigation, told Army Radio that “the matter is still being examined. We have no knowledge of the involvement of political groups in the embezzlement, but we do know that several well known businessmen fell pray to the fraud. Money was transferred to bank accounts, many of them private. We are talking about enormous amounts of money that were pocketed by the four suspects in Israel and abroad, probably in the U.S.”