Fleeing rabbi arrested in Inquisition-atonement Russian oligarch passport caper

[yankeedoodle]

You see, the jews demanded that Portugal give citizenship to jews who claim their ancestors were kicked out more than 500 years ago, and they demanded that Portugal let rabbis determine who gets citizenship, and Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich somehow got citizenship, and now everybody hates Russians - even jewish Russian oligarchs, apparently - so people were investigating the validity of Abramovich's rabbi-granted Portuguese citizenship, and the rabbi who gave - sold - it to him tried to flee to Israhell, where he knew he would be safe, but they caught him. 

Rabbi tied to inquiry into Roman Abramovich's Portuguese citizenship arrested: Report
https://www.jta.org/2022/03/11/global/rabbi-tied-to-inquiry-into-roman-abramovichs-portuguese-citizenship-arrested-report

A top rabbi in Portugal's second-largest city has been detained amid an inquiry into how Roman Abramovich, the Russian Jewish oligarch sanctioned this week in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, obtained Portuguese citizenship last year.

Rabbi Daniel Litvak of the Jewish Community of Porto, an organization representing Jews in that city, was arrested Thursday as he was preparing to depart for Israel, according to the Portuguese news organization Publico.

Multiple Portuguese agencies have been investigating whether Abramovich's citizenship was properly awarded under Portugal's 2013 law allowing naturalization for descendants of Sephardic Jews. The law represented an attempt to atone for the Inquisition, a campaign of religious persecution in Spain and Portugal in the 16th century that forced tens of thousands of Jews to emigrate, hide their Jewish identity or denounce it altogether.

The government delegated the task of vetting applications for citizenship to two groups, the Jewish Community of Lisbon and Litvak's organization in Porto. Tens of thousands of applicants have become Portuguese citizens under the law, which helped turn Porto into a Jewish destination.

Abramovich's citizenship — which gave him a European Union passport for the first time — raised questions because most Russian Jews are Ashkenazi and do not have Sephardic roots. But Litvak said in January that he was certain an investigation would show that his organization had assessed Abramovich's application as it would anyone else's.

The Jewish Community of Porto did not immediately reply to a query by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about Litvak's detainment.

Publico reported that investigators are examining whether "influence peddling, active corruption, forgery of documents, money laundering" and other crimes played a role in how Porto awarded citizenship. Portuguese criminal investigators conducted additional raids Friday, the news organization reported.

The inquiry into how the Jewish Community of Porto awarded citizenship to Sephardic Jews began well before Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine last month.

But the war has intensified scrutiny of Abramovich and other people tied to Putin. On Thursday, the United Kingdom, where he lives and owns the Chelsea soccer club, placed him under sanctions for the first time.

Portuguese officials told Reuters that Abramovich could potentially lose his Portuguese citizenship depending on the course of the investigation. Abramovich is also a citizen of Israel.

[yankeedoodle]

The Jewish community in Portugal suspends applying for citizenship
https://www.israelhayom.co.il/judaism/judaism-news/article/9091356

The move was taken against the background of suspicions that the chief rabbi helped the oligarch obtain a certificate that granted him Portuguese citizenship in violation of the law • The state filed indictments against him for bribery and money laundering • "A difficult and worrying event, community members face difficult days"

The Jewish community in Porto announced today (Sunday) that it is suspending its activities until further notice, and does not grant approvals for the purpose of granting Portuguese citizenship. This unprecedented move came in the wake of the arrest of Porto's chief rabbi Daniel Litvak last Thursday, amid suspicions that he helped oligarch Roman Abramovich obtain a certificate that granted him Portuguese citizenship illegally.

The Portuguese media reports that an investigation has also been opened into the process of obtaining the Portuguese citizenship of the Israeli-French millionaire Patrick Drahi, who is a native of Morocco. The rabbi was released from custody on Friday and indictments were filed against him for accepting bribes, money laundering and tax evasion, after significant amounts of money originating in question were discovered in his bank account.

In a press release issued in response, the Jewish community in Porto confirmed that other members of it were the target of a police search, after a complaint was filed from an anonymous source regarding irregularities in the process of granting citizenship certificates. We further noted that the payments collected as a result of proceedings go through banks and are under the full supervision of the Ministry of Finance, and therefore it is not possible to embezzle these funds.

Rabbi Daniel Litvak heads the Jewish Committee in Porto, which recently confirmed that Roman Abramovich is a descendant of deportees from Spain and Portugal. Following this, the Portuguese Ministry of Justice decided to grant Abramovich local citizenship under the Citizenship Law enacted in 2013. The decision drew much criticism, and although the community and the Portuguese Ministry of Justice contradicted and denied the allegations against them, a police investigation was opened. .

The media in Portugal covers the affair extensively. Recently, a cover story in Republico, the major newspaper in Portugal, claimed that the community in Porto had become rich by granting citizenship certificates. The long article includes very harsh remarks with a distinctly antisemitic tone. Among other things, it says that "Jews like to do business" and that since the passage of the Citizenship Law, the community has established a kosher hotel, a mikveh, hired security guards and established a new museum, while before the passage of the law it was a modest and resource-free community.

Itai Moore - President of the Association "Beyond the Arc of Portugal": "This is a difficult and worrying event and there is no doubt that the members of the community are facing difficult days. At the same time, I believe in light of the blessed work And because of the developments, we get a wave of requests for help from people who are in the middle of obtaining citizenship and also requests from people who rejected the move and now want to start exercising their right to citizenship soon. It is important to remember that That option is still open. "

[yankeedoodle]

Documents from Roman Abramovich's controversial Portuguese naturalization surface online
https://www.jta.org/2022/04/01/global/documents-from-roman-abramovichs-controversial-portuguese-naturalization-surface-online

The question of how Russian Jewish billionaire Roman Abramovich obtained Portuguese citizenship, and a European passport https://www.jta.org/2021/12/29/global/roman-abramovichs-use-of-portuguese-law-for-sephardic-jews-seeking-citizenship-draws-scrutiny , has loomed large in the last month, especially after a rabbi responsible for certifying citizenship applications was arrested in early March.

Now, a trove of documents associated with Abramovich's Portuguese citizenship application have leaked online, with possible ramifications for tens of thousands of people who are waiting to hear whether their own applications will be approved.

The documents include testimonies from rabbis and others about Abramovich's Sephardic credentials https://www.docdroid.net/jpAFd83/roman-abramovichs-sephardic-origins-pdf#page=4 , required under a 2013 law of naturalization for descendants of Sephardic Jews that Portugal enacted atone for their persecution during the Inquisition. Spain enacted a similar law, but its limited window has largely closed.https://www.jta.org/2021/08/23/global/why-spains-jewish-citizenship-laws-acceptance-rate-has-plummeted

It is unclear how the documents, which include what appears to be an unredacted photocopy of Abramovich's Israeli passport, ended up online. It is also unclear whether the documents reflect the total associated with Abramovich's citizenship application.

But what is clear is that Abramovich's application did make the case that he has Sephardic roots despite his Ashkenazi-sounding last name — and that the leaked documents are unlikely to convince skeptics that those claims were scrutinized thoroughly.

Prominent rabbis submitted letters on behalf of the businessman, who has donated many millions to Jewish causes all over the world. But the documents leaked online do not include a family tree or other genealogical research submitted by many other citizenship applicants, including some who have had their applications rejected.

One of the rabbis whose letter is included in the dossier confirmed the authenticity of his statement to a Portuguese journalist working in collaboration with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. JTA was not able to immediately confirm the authenticity of all the documents in the dossier.

Abramovich's naturalization has become a symbol for suspected abuse of the law that has allowed tens of thousands of people to become citizens of Portugal, a member of the European Union.

Portugal announced it would dramatically tighten the law amid news that Abramovich, whose citizenship was granted in April 2021, is the subject of international sanctions against oligarchs in connection with Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Abramovich made billions in the Russian oil industry but has denied that he was ever part of Russian President Vladimir Putin's inner circle.

The Portuguese justice ministry had launched a criminal investigation related to his application on suspicion of fraud in late 2021 and, earlier this month, arrested the rabbi who certified it. The rabbi, Daniel Litvak, has been barred from leaving the country while an investigation continues.

Litvak is the chief rabbi of Porto, one of two communities along with Lisbon entrusted by the government with the task of vetting all applications. The community has said it charged 250 euros, or roughly $270, per application it handled.

Before the citizenship law, the Porto community said it did not have enough money to fix the moldy roof of its only synagogue. Now the same community boasts a new mikvah, a ritual bath, and a Holocaust museum. It employs a full-time rabbi and security guards and has produced a feature film about its own history.

After Litvak's arrest, the Porto community announced it would no longer certify applications because  it is "no longer interested in cooperating with the state." The community has denied any wrongdoing while also ignoring calls to disclose documents relevant to the application.

The leaked dossier seems to have been put together as a defense, though it does not say who produced it. It contains pictures from the Porto Jewish Community and favorable news articles about Abramovich as well as an unsigned document stating that his application "was produced correctly in the light of the Jewish world and Portuguese law."

But unless the Porto community or others have additional documents, then the dossier does little to improve the prospect of the law remaining in its current form.

Unlike many other applications — including ones that had been rejected — the leaked dossier contains neither a family tree nor genetic tests nor any other solid, verifiable evidence that Abramovich can trace his roots to the Iberian Peninsula.

Instead, one of the central documents in the dossier is a 108-word statement by Alexander Boroda, the president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, the main Chabad-Lubavitch organization in that country and by far the largest Jewish organization there.

Boroda "can certify that Roman Abramovich is a descendant of Sephardic Jews; preserved sentimental connection to Portugal; [is a] member of Sephardic community; is of Portuguese ancestry; is Sephardic Portuguese Jew," read the statement.

Under the sub-headline "justification," Boroda wrote only: "This certification is based on my acquaintance with Roman Abramovich testimonies and a personal interview that I conducted. I confirm that Roman Abramovich preserves Sephardic rituals, lifestyle, traditions and food customs."

Boroda confirmed the authenticity of his statement to Ana Filipa Nunes, a Portuguese journalist who interviewed him about it for the SIC television channel while reporting about the dossier in collaboration with JTA.

The Sephardic Educational Center, a Jerusalem-based organization devoted to promoting Sephardic culture, submitted a much longer position paper whose main argument is that Abramovich is Sephardic because his last name means "son of Abraham." Many Sephardic Jews also had that name, albeit in Hebrew, Ben Avraham, the paper explains.

Another statement came from Rabbi Yonah Leib Lebel, a follower of the Breslov Hasidic movement. Lebel states that Abramovich had ancestors who belonged to the Sephardic Jewish community of Hamburg. The last name of Abramovich's paternal grandfather was Leibovich, which means son of Leib, a Yiddish version of Leon. Leon is a common name on the Iberian Peninsula, the statement says.

Lebel's letter also states that unnamed descendants of Abramovich used to live in the Polish city of Poznan, where a founder of Chabad named Portugaler once lived. "Since then the family was linked with it," Lebel wrote, referring to Chabad.

The dossier, which contains multiple news articles supporting the notion that Abramovich has an attachment to Sephardic Judaism, also features a photocopy of an Israeli passport of Abramovich valid until 2023. Abramovich gained Israeli citizenship in 2018 under the country's Right of Return for Jews who want to live there.

In the unsigned cover letter of the dossier, its authors say that seeing Abramovich's application snowball into a scandal has been traumatic to Jews in Porto.

"This news originated a wave of immense attacks against the Jewish community and was felt like a new expulsion," they wrote, but did not specify what they meant by "attacks." It led the Jewish community of Portugal and that of Porto "to fear not only a 'Dreyfus case,'" they wrote, referencing an infamous antisemitic show trial in 1896 France, "but also an extreme right-wing terror attack, because it [the community] was 'selling the country.' This happened in Halle in Germany!" the authors wrote, referencing a neo-Nazi's deadly assault on a synagogue there in 2019.

The Jewish Community of Porto did not immediately reply to a query by JTA on the origins of the dossier and whether it had any comment on its content. No physical attacks against Jews have been reported in the city in recent weeks.

 

[yankeedoodle]

Portuguese court loosens rules for rabbi charged in Roman Abramovich Sephardic citizenship probe
https://www.jta.org/2022/09/29/global/portuguese-court-loosens-rules-for-rabbi-charged-in-roman-abramovich-sephardic-citizenship-probe
Since March, Rabbi Daniel Litvak has been required to appear three times a week at the magistrate's office in Porto, the Portuguese city where he is accused of submitting fraudulent citizenship applications for Sephardic Jews. His passports were confiscated and he was barred from contacting the lawyer who is the other defendant in the criminal case against him.

Now, an appeals court in Lisbon has ruled that Litvak does not need to abide by the stringent restrictions. The court also criticized Portuguese prosecutors for how they have handled the case against Litvak, according to the Portuguese newspaper Expresso.

"It is said that the accused, in the exercise of his functions, had privileged knowledge and connections ... which allowed him to give priority to requests for the acquisition of nationality to Sephardic Jews," the judgment said, according to Expresso. "But there is not a single fact to materialize this conclusion, namely which officials had privileged links with the applicant and, more importantly, what such knowledge and privileges consisted of."

The decision does not end the criminal case against Litvak, an Argentine-Israeli who was arrested in March while preparing to travel to Israel. But it means he is free to leave the country, and it deals a significant blow to the prosecution of a case that a Porto Jewish leader called "the greatest attack against a Jewish community in Europe in the 21st century."

Litvak's arrest was related to inquiries by multiple Portuguese agencies into how Roman Abramovich, a Russian Jewish oligarch, was able to gain Portuguese citizenship under the country's 2013 law allowing naturalization for descendants of Sephardic Jews. The law represented an attempt to atone for the Inquisition, a campaign of religious persecution in Spain and Portugal in the 16th century that forced tens of thousands of Jews to emigrate, hide their Jewish identity or denounce it altogether.

The government delegated the task of vetting applications for citizenship to two groups, the Jewish Community of Lisbon and Litvak's organization in Porto. Tens of thousands of applicants have become Portuguese citizens under the law — which helped turn Porto into a Jewish destination — and with their fees of 250 euros each, the applicants have helped reverse the local Jewish community's cash-flow challenges.

Abramovich's citizenship — which gave him a European Union passport for the first time — raised questions because most Russian Jews are Ashkenazi and do not have Sephardic roots. But Litvak said in January that he was certain an investigation would show that his organization had assessed Abramovich's application as it would anyone else's.

Litvak's arrest several weeks later on charges of tax fraud, falsification of documents, money laundering and other crimes took place shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, bringing to the fore questions about whether Russians such as Abramovich with close ties to President Vladimir Putin could flee their country.

The ensuing case has drawn attention to divisions between the communities in Porto and Lisbon. In June, the head of the Jewish Community of Porto said in a letter to lawmakers that the probe into Litvak and the community was  "the greatest attack against a Jewish community in Europe in the 21st century," and  "was perpetrating a "Holocaust against families." A former leader of the Jewish community of Lisbon publicly dismissed Senderowicz's allegations as baseless and "absurd."

After Litvak's arrest, his group announced that it would not process any more Sephardic citizenship applications, leaving only the Jewish Community of Lisbon with the right to naturalize the descendants of Sephardic Jews. It is unclear how many applications are currently pending with the Jewish Community of Porto, which has handled thousands of such applications since the citizenship law went into effect in 2015.