Bernie Madoff: Bernie's ties to Ehud Olmert

/Home/Madoff and the Jewish Community

Bernie Madoff: Bernie's ties to Ehud Olmert
July 24, 2009, 12:26PM


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."