Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Kosher Krime

"Federal prosecutors Wednesday accused a former manager of defunct meatpacker Agriprocessors Inc. [AI] of cheating a bank, laundering money and destroying evidence during opening arguments [in Sioux Falls, SD]. ... Mr. [Sholom] Rubashkin's lead defense attorney, Guy Cook called Mr. Rubashkin an 'honest family man' who was in over his head in a complex business. Mr. Rubashkin, a Hasidic Jew, was trained as a rabbi, not as a businessman, he said, and any 'sloppy' business practices that might have occurred don't amount to crimes. ... Assistant US Attorney Charles J. Williams said in court that Mr. Rubashkin 'repeatedly lied' to his lender about his company's financial health and 'reassured the bank that [AI] was in full compliance with the law.' ... But [AI] filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November 2008, leaving the US with a temporary shortage of kosher meat. The company was recently sold to SHF Industries. Specifically, the government says Mr. Rubashkin engineered a scheme that illegally diverted millions of dollars in customer payments away from First Bank Business Capital Inc., a subsidiary of St. Louis-based First Bank, which had issued him a $35 million revolving line of credit", Lauren Etter at the WSJ, 15 October 2009, link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125552995951084931.html.

This case always disturbed me because the press made it into an immigration case. Now we see the immigration angle was tangential to the bank fraud.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"...was trained as a rabbi, not as a businessman, he said, and any 'sloppy' business practices that might have occurred don't amount to crimes..."

I thought you were you were going to draw an analogy to the defense that bank managements would use with their "sloppy" models and not understanding the "dangers" of leverage...

Jonathan Medows, CPA said...

As both a CPA and a Rabbi I find Rubashkin to be repugnant. He violated several basic beliefs of Judaism. He is a poor example of a religious official. If I were him I would have downplayed the rabbinic background. He set himself up to be held to a highcer standard by claiming moral authority.

Jonathan Medows, CPA
www.medowscpa.com