The Jerusalem Post, Internet News Article, July 16th
2000:
Moskowitz accused of operating
illegal LA casino
By Tom Tugend
LOS ANGELES (July 16) - A key committee chairman of the
California legislature has released a report charging that Irving
Moskowitz, a major funder of pro-settler initiatives in Israel,
conspired with a public agency to operate an illegally financed
casino.
The report also urges that Moskowitz and the agency be
investigated for possible criminal and corrupt activities and that he
be required to return $12 million in public funds.
Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Los Angeles), who heads the Joint
Legislative Audit Committee, made public the149-page report prepared
by the committee's staff.
Moskowitz has long been a controversial figure in Hawaiian
Gardens, a tiny, low-income city in Los Angeles County with some
15,000 residents, mostly Latinos, where he operates a bingo club and
a card casino, and in Jerusalem, where he has bankrolled Jewish
settlements in Arab neighborhoods.
The 72-year old Moskowitz was born in New York, raised in
Milwaukee, and now lives in Miami. He is a retired physician and
hospital developer and a devoutly Orthodox philanthropist.
In 1988, Moskowitz took over the city's floundering bingo parlor
and within a short time the 800-seat, non-profit enterprise was
taking in $33 million a year. He also acquired one-third of the
town's commercial property.
Moskowitz soon gained a kind of godfather status in the mini-city,
liberally supporting various civic and communal projects and
subsidizing the municipal government at the rate of $200,000 a month,
about half the city's annual budget. Periodically, Moskowitz stopped
his monthly payments; one hiatus in September 1997 forced the city to
lay off its entire 21-person police force.
In Israel, meanwhile, the tax-exempt Irving I. Moskowitz
Foundation has provided an estimated $25 million to Orthodox settler
groups to establish Jewish housing developments in Arab
neighborhoods, moves opposed as politically incendiary by both Likud
and Labor governments.
Additional money went to American organizations opposed to the
Oslo peace process, such as the American Friends of Ateret Cohanim,
the National Council of Young Israel, the Zionist Organization of
America, PRO-Israel, the Washington-based Center for Security Policy,
and Americans for a Safe Israel.
The current investigation and report focuses on Moskowitz's
for-profit casino and card club. According to Wildman's report, the
Redevelopment Agency of Hawaiian Gardens subsidized the acquisition
of the casino with $12 million, despite legal restrictions against
the use of public funds to subsidize gambling operations.
According to the report, "A city that embarked on an economic
revitalization effort almost 20 years ago has little to show for its
efforts save for an inappropriate gaming establishment, approximately
$12 million in expenditures of public funds, and financial dependence
on the goodwill of one owner/developer, who is operating an illegally
subsidized gaming operation."
The report has been forwarded to California Attorney-General Bill
Lockyer, who has the authority to deny the casino a permanent license
and to initiate further investigations. It is also under review by
Harlan Goodson, director of gambling controls, a spokesman said.
Also criticized in the report is the casino's location, adjacent
to a middle school, hospital, place of worship, and public park.
Another target of the report is Beryl Weiner, Moskowitz's
attorney, who, it is charged, has represented both Moskowitz and the
Redevelopment Agency at the same time in an apparent conflict of
interest. Weiner vigorously denied this charge, as well as all other
accusations in the legislative report, which he denounced as "flawed
and biased" and fit only for the garbage can.
The nemesis of Moskowitz for the last two years, largely
responsible for focusing media and public attention on his
activities, has been a citizens group called the Coalition for
Justice in Hawaiian Gardens and Jerusalem. The coalition was founded
and is largely energized by Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak, 51, of nearby
Downey, who says he became first aware of Moskowitz's "anti-peace"
activities in Jerusalem while spending two years in Israel.
Back in Los Angeles, Beliak turned his attention to Hawaiian
Gardens and discovered that, "It's the kind of company town in which
Moskowitz calls all the shots."
The coalition was launched in 1998 when Beliak persuaded a dozen
colleagues, attending the national convention of Reform rabbis, to
picket the casino. Beliak says the coalition has no formal
membership, but has the support of 500-600 rabbis of all
denominations, Christian clergy, and Latino activists.
