Media reports that a local governing council in Sydney, Australia would write off a $10,000 debt incurred by Chabad’s Yeshiva Centre there are untrue, Mayor Sally Betts said.
Sydney Chabad To Be Sued By City Over More Than $10,000 In Unpaid Garbage Collection Fees
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Media reports that a local governing council in Sydney, Australia would write off a $10,000 debt incurred by Chabad’s Yeshiva Centre there are untrue, Mayor Sally Betts told the Australian Jewish news website J-Wire.
The debt – all of for unpaid “waste management” was reportedly accumulated between November 2011 and May 2012.
City debt collectors were unable to find the former directors of the Chabad Yeshiva Centre.
“At the Council meeting on 19 May 2015 this is the motion that was moved. ‘That Council instructs its solicitors to issue a statement of liquidated claim against [Rabbi] Yosef Feldman and Sydney Talmudical College Association for the debt owed plus costs and interest, and pursues a judgement in court and the enforcement of that judgement,’” Mayor Betts said.
Rabbi Yosef Feldman's testimony in February 2015 at the Royal Commission investigating child sex abuse at Chabad institutions in Australia was so unacceptable – it made major news across the country and was widely and vociferously condemned – that Feldman was forced to apologize and resign. But after doing so he spent a significant amount of effort attacking his critics and trying to return to his position.
A spokesman for Chabad’s Yeshiva Centre – which is controlled by Feldman's mother Peninah and father Pinchus, who have a long history of financial problems (and, allegedly, financial mismanagement) related to the Chabad institutions they control – reportedly told J-Wire that the debt (and, apparently, the “waste management” it paid for) belongs to a previous entity that existed before the Yeshiva Centre restructured at the end of 2012. That restructure, Chabad said, included a change of management and change of ownership of the Yeshiva Centre’s main buildings.
The “waste” “managed” by the city for Chabad apparently did not transfer with the restructuring – even though that restructuring included a sizable bailout from a wealthy donor.
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