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El Al owner used fraudulent nursing home funds to buy airline, New York AG Letitia James claims
(New York Jewish Week) – New York State Attorney General Letitia James accused Jewish owners of four nursing homes in New York of misusing $83 million in government funds and diverting them towards the purchase of Israel’s national airline, El Al.
In a lawsuit filed this week, James alleges that instead of employing the funds to care for residents and hire adequate staff, Kenneth Rozenberg and Daryl Hagler, the owners of Centers Health Care, have been using the money for their own personal benefit. In 2020, Rozenberg purchased a controlling stake in the Israeli airline El Al for $107 million. Hagler became a director of El Al in 2021, and per the suit spent $132 million in 2022 to purchase three properties in Brooklyn and Queens.
“Rozenberg’s investment in El Al, which ultimately allowed him to become the controlling shareholder of the airline, was made possible by his and Hagler’s longstanding pattern of fraud and illegality,” the suit says.
James is seeking to block Centers Health Care from admitting new residents until they are properly staffed to care for current residents as well as hire financial and healthcare monitors to ensure compliance. Rozenberg and Hagler are also being asked to return the allegedly stolen funds.
The facilities in question are Beth Abraham Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in the Bronx, Buffalo Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Buffalo, Holliswood Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare in Queens and Martine Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in White Plains.
Centers Health Care denied the allegations. “Centers Health Care prides itself on its commitment to patient care,” Jeff Jacomowitz, a spokesman for Centers Health Care, said in a statement. “Centers denies the New York attorney general’s allegations wholeheartedly and attempted to resolve this matter out of court. We will fight these spurious claims with the facts on our side.”
Per the suit, Centers Health Care has been engaging in fraud since as early as 2013. The suit alleges that the nursing homes often left residents sitting in their own feces and urine for hours, failed to respond to calls for help when residents fell and kept residents malnourished and starving.
“Nursing homes are meant to be safe spaces where the most vulnerable members of our community receive the care and dignity they deserve. Instead, the owners of Centers Health Care allegedly used these four nursing homes — and the vulnerable New Yorkers who lived there — to extract millions of dollars for their personal use, leading to elderly residents and those with disabilities suffering unconscionable pain, neglect, degradation, and even death,” James said in a press release.
“Rather than honor their legal duty to residents to provide the highest possible quality of life, Centers leadership and their associates seized every opportunity to put personal profit over resident care,” she added.
Four hundred residents at Centers Health Care facilities died in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The suit alleges that they died as a result of the nursing home’s failure to provide adequate staff and follow COVID safety protocols.
In the first year of the pandemic, more than 15,000 nursing home residents statewide died due to the coronavirus and its complications, according to a state audit.
Rozenberg was reported to have used his son, Eli Rozenberg, an Israeli citizen, as the frontman for his bid to purchase El Al, due to a law preventing non-Israelis from owning the airline.
The suit alleges that in 2020, “Hagler used a bank account that received, among other sums, profits obtained fraudulently and illegally from the Nursing Homes to loan Rozenberg $103 million — at no interest and with no repayment terms or loan documentation — to facilitate Rozenberg’s purchase of the Israeli national airline, El Al. In the fall of 2020, Rozenberg lent $109 million to a company controlled by his son to purchase a controlling stake in the airline for a total of $107 million.”
The senior Rozenberg made Aliyah in 2021 and took control of the company in May 2021.
This is the fourth lawsuit James has filed against nursing home owners this year. In a press conference, she encouraged anyone with concerns or information about nursing home conditions to file a confidential complaint.
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The post El Al owner used fraudulent nursing home funds to buy airline, New York AG Letitia James claims appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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