[Left] Shaya Boymelgreen with Chabad's Rabbi Binyomin Klein and Sefardic chief rabbi of Israel Shlomo Amar at Colel Chabad's dinner honoring Rubashkin. [Right] Lev Leviev with Chabad's 'chief rabbi of Russia' Berel Lazar.
Chabad's major donor Lev Leviev and his American development partner* Shaya Boymelgreen seem to have learned their business practices from Aaron Rubashkin. BrooklynPapers.com reports:
A developer who plans to transform the banks of Brooklyn’s Lavender Lake into a designer subdivision called Gowanus Village is facing a state investigation and legal complaints from construction workers and dozens of disgruntled condo owners.
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is examining a claim by 200 construction workers that developer Shaya Boymelgreen failed to pay overtime for the past three years — the same charge that is being heard in a separate class-action suit at state Supreme Court, — a source in Spitzer’s office said.
Spitzer’s lawyers are also arbitrating complaints from Park Slope condo owners who bought Boymelgreen apartments only to discover that the windows didn’t keep out the rain, walls weren’t properly insulated and bad engineering meant moldy cellars.…
“The supervisors want everything done fast so if a contractor doesn’t finish something then [the supervisor] will just tell whoever is on the site to finish it up, even if we’ve never done it before,” said a Boymelgreen laborer, one of dozens who submitted his pay records in the class-action complaint now before Spitzer.
The worker earns $10 an hour — a third of what a union member takes home. He says he is owed thousands in back overtime pay.
Despite the cloud hanging over him, his work and his labor practices, in June, Boymelgreen announced that he would begin turning his attention on burgeoning residential markets in Israel, Europe and India.
“…We’re going global,” he told the Wall Street Journal last month.
The Rubas
hkins were honored by Colel Chabad last December, in the middle of the Postville scandal. Boymelgreen is seen top left at that dinner with Rabbi Binyomin Klein and Sefardic chief rabbi of Israel Shlomo Amar.
A reader reports that Boymelgreen came from Israel to study in Crown Heights and that, at a Yud Tes Kislev gathering in Boro Park this year, it was announced that Boymelgeen is sponsoring a new edition of the Tanya, the classic work of Chabad hasidut. It will be a named edition, like the Gutnick Chumash.
Boymelgreen also owns the Jewish Press building. The JP gives Chabad a lot of space to push its agenda. Is there a link? I don't know, but one can speculate there is.
Move over Rubashkin. There's another 'frumer yid' trying valiantly to outsleeze you. But don't worry, Chabad will still have its piece of the sleeze crown.
*Leviev "cut back" investment with Boymelgreen in June, perhaps because of the growing scandals associated with Boymelgreen, which certainly would damage Leviev's move into branded retail diamonds. Still, the company is Leviev-Boymelgreen, and Leviev continues to be involved both financially and in management.
[Above Left] Sholom Rubashkin delivers the invocation and recites the Rebbe’s kapital at the Colel Chabad dinner in December. [Above Right.] Shaya Boymelgreen.