Is the Prosecutor Protecting Madoff's Fellow Conspirators?

March 17, 2009

MADOFF'S PARTNERS:  A DIRECTOR AND AN OWNER OF PRIVATIZED ISRAELI BANKS KNOWN FOR MONEY-LAUNDERING

"Where's the money, Bernie?"

Madoff and one of his lawyers

"So he spends the rest of his life in jail — is that justice? People's lives are ruined," said Adriane Biondo of Los Angeles, one of five members of her family who lost money with Madoff. "He's sitting in jail? That's awesome," she said sarcastically. "Where's the money, Bernie?"
- AP Report, March 12, 2009

Is the Prosecutor Protecting Madoff's Fellow Conspirators?
17 March 2009

"People tend to think of the Israeli War of Independence as gung-ho Jews-Arabs stuff; it wasn't that at all.  It was more Bonnie and Clyde, Chicago type of stuff.  The people in the Stern Gang were violent, but they had a droll sense of humor.  Some of them used to dress up to rob banks.  They loved to put on masks and little moustaches."
- Avi Nesher, Israeli film director and partner of Sharon Harel, commenting on his film about the Stern Gang, to the New York Times, 9 October 1981.  Sharon Harel is the daughter of Yossi Harel, the former head of Israeli intelligence.

When Bernard Madoff read a statement in court recounting his crimes on March 12, "he sounded like a man reading a speech he hadn't bothered to rehearse," according to Joe Nocera of the New York Times.  Madoff's performance was most unsatisfactory for those who had lost their life savings in his immense fraud.  They, of course, want to know where their money went and who helped Madoff carry out the biggest financial fraud in U.S. history.  The only thing made clear during Madoff's hearing was that he is refusing to help the government build a case against anyone else, which indicates that there are others involved in this massive fraud who are being protected.

"Did we get answers?  Not at all," said George Nierenberg, a filmmaker whose family lost "almost everything," said after the hearing.  Nierenberg, who was allowed to speak during the hearing with Judge Denny Chin, expressed his dismay that Madoff had not being charged with conspiracy: 

Nierenberg: "I know that the operation – Madoff's operation was massive, that he didn't commit these crimes alone and I don't understand why conspiracy isn't part of one of his pleas.  Just to produce the reams of documents that were received and the elaborate data that went into them must have required an army of people to produce.  And we all know that Madoff wasn't around a lot at his operation.  There were other people who handled it when he was gone.

The Court:  I gather your point is that I should reject the plea because the government has not charged conspiracy?

Nierenberg:  No.  The question is – I'm not suggesting that you reject the plea.  What I'm suggesting is that there is an additional crime that was committed that wasn't included in the plea that needs to be considered.

Joe Nocera, a business journalist, added his opinion as if it were a fact in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune by stating that Madoff's fraud was a simple Ponzi scheme and that "there is no money" to be recovered.  Nocera wrote: 

One woman argued that the judge should force a trial because it would allow for the "opportunity to find out where the money is."

But of course there is no money.  That is the point of a Ponzi scheme:  the fraudster uses money from new investors to pay old investors, pretending that payment is their "gain."

How can Mr. Nocera say with certainty that the Madoff scam is really a Ponzi scheme?  Is he simply taking Madoff's word that this was a Ponzi scheme?  If Nocera has information to support his statement, why doesn't he present it?  How does Nocera know, for example, that the Madoff scheme is not a massive theft posing as a Ponzi scheme?  Why would there be such a high-level cover-up in the Madoff case if this were a simple Ponzi scheme?  Why would the prosecution be willing to ignore the other people who were involved in the Madoff fraud?

The failure of the prosecution to bring charges of conspiracy against Madoff suggests that the U.S. attorney is ignoring the network behind the crime, as Mr. Nierenberg said, by failing to address the fact that other people must be involved.  This point was addressed by Christopher Caldwell, the editor of The Weekly Standard, in an article in the Financial Times:

To top it all off, there have been no charges of conspiracy against Mr. Madoff.  That means that, as far as prosecutors are concerned, and as far as we are permitted to speculate, this make-believe investment history was his own creation.  He must have been one of the hardest-working men of his generation.

Is the prosecutor playing along with Madoff to protect the other conspirators involved in his fraud?  If he is, why would he?  Who are these other high-level conspirators who are being protected?

It appears that the larger conspiracy is being protected.  In this regard, the Madoff investigation is similar to the 9-11 investigation:  evidence of a larger conspiracy is being avoided and ignored.  After three months of investigation, it is outrageous that charges of conspiracy were not included in Madoff's plea.  He must have had conspirators in his office, in his family, and at his banks.  It is not possible that he carried out this huge fraud all by himself and managed to keep it concealed from his family and business partners for 20 years.  That is simply not believable. 

As I have pointed out earlier, Madoff's has very close and long-standing business ties to the directors and owners of two of Israel's largest banks, which were privatized in 2005-06 under Israeli finance ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Olmert:  Bank Leumi and Israel Discount Bank.  It is a matter of record that the IDB has a history of money-laundering and illegal money transfers. 

Jacob Ezra Merkin, who funneled hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars to Madoff's fund, is co-owner of Bank Leumi.  Madoff's co-chair at the Sy Syms School of Business at Yeshiva University was Sy Syms, a long-standing director of Israel Discount Bank of New York.  These two relationships strongly suggest that Madoff's scheme was a massive theft being disguised as a Ponzi scheme in which fellow Zionist fund-raisers played key roles.

If this is the case and the Madoff fraud is actually a huge Zionist fund-raising scheme in which untold billions have been stolen, then we would expect that the role of the prosecutor would be played by a Zionist agent acting the role of a tough, but not too tough, prosecutor.  It should come as no surprise that this is, in fact, the case.

LEV L. DASSIN – U.S. ATTORNEY

Lev Louis Dassin

Lev Louis Dassin, the acting, i.e. temporary and non-appointed, U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, is the person responsible for prosecuting the Madoff case.  Oddly, Dassin is also handling the "mini-Madoff" case of Arthur G. Nadel, whose operation was based in Sarasota, Florida.  The reason given for the Nadel criminal case being heard in New York is that he traded through a broker in New York City.  I have reason to suspect there may be a connection to Israel, which I will discuss later.

Lev Dassin, the U.S. attorney who charged Madoff, was given the position of acting U.S. Attorney on 1 December 2008 when Michael Garcia resigned from the post.  Dassin had been a deputy to U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia and took over the job when his boss resigned.  Dassin is now filling in the position until a new U.S. Attorney for Manhattan is nominated and approved, which may be Dassin after all.

DASSIN PROSECUTED 1993 WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMBING

From 1992 to 1998, Dassin served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he prosecuted a wide range of cases involving terrorist acts, racketeering violations, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and white collar crimes.

In 1998, Mr. Dassin received the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service for his role in the investigation and prosecution of Ramzi Yousef, the so-called "mastermind" of the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center.  In 1994, Mr. Dassin received the Attorney General's Award for Exceptional Service for his role in the investigation and prosecution of four defendants for their roles in the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center.  

As we now know, the prosecution of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was nothing but a big false-flag "frame-up" carried out by the same elements at the Dept. of Justice and F.B.I. who went on to conceal the truth and destroy the evidence of 9-11.  Dassin worked closely with Michael Chertoff, the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey who carried out the investigation and prosecution on the New Jersey side of the 1993 bombing plot.  Chertoff, an Israeli dual-national whose mother, Livia Eisen, was a Mossad agent, went on to serve as the Asst. Attorney General of the U.S. in charge of the criminal division of the Dept. of Justice.  In this position in 2001-2003 Chertoff masterminded the non-investigation and cover-up of the evidence of 9-11 and the criminal destruction of the steel from the World Trade Center.

Dassin later became a partner at the law firm Kaye Scholer and taught a Columbia Law School class with Judge Michael B. Mukasey, the current United States attorney general.  Mukasey also played a key role in the judicial cover-up of the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. 

In short, Lev Dassin is one of the insiders in the judicial game surrounding the false-flag terror attacks that changed America and brought U.S. troops into the Middle East on a permanent basis.  The "War on Terror" was planned and first articulated by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister and finance minister who supervised the privatization of the above named Israeli banks. 

WHO IS LEV DASSIN?

Lev Dassin, 43, is a Jewish lawyer from a Russian Zionist/Communist family background. He is the son of Gerald and Miriam Dassin of New York. His father retired in 1997 as the executive vice president for finance of Revlon International in New York.  His mother, who died in 1997, was a real estate broker and a vice president at Charles H. Greenthal Residential Sales in New York.

On 17 January 1998, Asst. U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin married Betsy Kramer, a staff lawyer at Lawyers for Children in New York, according to their wedding announcement in the New York Times the following day. Rabbi David Small performed the ceremony at the Chelsea Market in New York.  Both Lev and Betsy were 32 when they married and both had received their law degrees from New York University.

Dassin graduated with a degree in English literature from Cornell, before studying law.  After receiving his law degree from New York University, he joined the prosecutor’s office in 1992, just a few months before the bombing of the World Trade Center on 26 February 1993.

As U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Dassin holds one of the most prestigious and influential prosecutor’s jobs in the nation, especially these days.  Dassin, however, tends to stay out of public view, and chooses to speak through his prosecutors in court as he did during the most recent Madoff hearing, where his assistant Marc Litt spoke for the prosecution.

Dassin is described as "a tenacious, nonpartisan advocate who moves aggressively where necessary and is willing to make hard decisions."  His history in the prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center, and his background indicate that he is a dedicated Zionist.  Dassin is a scion of the Russian Jewish family of Sam and Bertha Dassin.  Lev's father Gerald said his uncle was the famous black-listed film director, Julius "Jules" Dassin. 

Julius Dassin, the Hollywood director, went to Europe after his membership in the Communist Party during the 1930s was exposed in the mid-1950s.  Dassin made a Zionist propaganda film, Survival 1967, about the 1967 Israeli war known as the Six-Day War, which was released in Israeli, French, and English versions.  The Hebrew-language version was entitled Hamilchama al hashalom.  His son Joseph, a well-known French-American singer, also worked on the film.

Jules Dassin, who has been described as "100 percent Zionist," arrived in Israel as the war ended and made a film he described as "a paean to Israel."  In making the film, Dassin worked closely with the Israeli government and military leaders.  He interviewed Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, Levi Eshkol, and David Ben-Gurion.  In 1970, Dassin employed the youngest son of Moshe Dayan in one of his films.

Sources: 

Caldwell, Christopher, "Madoff's life of make-believe," Financial Times, March 14-15, 2009

Dassin, Gerald, Telephone conversation with Christopher Bollyn, March 19, 2009

Henriques, Diana B. and Jack Healy, "As Madoff goes to jail, questions still abound," New York Times (Global edition), March 14-15, 2009

Nocera, Joe, "Sharing the Madoff blame," New York Times (Global edition), March 14-15, 2009

Chase, Chris, "At the Movies," New York Times, October 9, 1981

Transcript of U.S.A. v. Bernard L. Madoff (09 CR 213), U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, Judge Denny Chin, March 12, 2009