Is This Pinchas Shapiro The Same?

Relating to the WJC contretemps, I have a question about the identity of one Pinchas Shapiro.

Here's one Pinchas Shapiro:-

The source quoted by ynetnews personally attacked the President, doubting his mental faculties, and accusing him of nepotism. "Edgar Bronfman is basically senile. He has one good day and two bad days. He is no longer capable of running organization. He announced: I'm president and I'll step down whenever I feel like it," the source said. "That means, he'll step down only when his son, Mathew, is ready to take power. Mathew does not have experience," the source said, adding: "What are we, Mubarak? Assad? The guy's president for 27 years, then he puts his son in. It doesn't look good."

To Bronfman's defense came Pinchas Shapiro, of the WJC's US branching, saying that the Israeli's comments were " based upon the worst kind of personal politics I have ever witnessed. Mr. Bronfman is far from senile. I personally have met with him several times this week, he is lucid and physically fit. Rumors about his so-called failing health are false and are simply disgusting. They are part of a political campaign to divert attention from the fact that the Israeli Branch and its former director were in severe violation of their fiduciary responsibilities," Shapiro added. He described the source's statements as "scurrilous and false allegations," adding that they were "offensive and are the last attempts of those people have done things wrong to divert attention from themselves and throw it on someone else. Ultimately, they are responsible for what has happened."

Shapiro went on the attack against the Israeli leadership. "The WJC uncovered significant financial irregularities at the WJC Israel Branch and Institute. There was an extensive 20-month cover-up of the wrongdoing by those involved and now it has been ended," Shapiro said, adding: "WJC grants to the Branch have been suspended and the misappropriated money has been ordered to be returned. Mr. Bronfman insisted that the WJC stand for integrity and the Steering Committee supported his call."

"Had the Branch come in, cleaned up the financial irregularities and complied with all the laws, regulations, policies and procedures, none of this would have happened," Shapiro added. "The fact is that they didn't because they were covering up improper financial behavior. Standing for integrity, the WJC acted morally, legally and properly to stop their improper financial behavior," he said. Shapiro also dismissed objections to Singer's firing: "Mr. Singer was an employee of the WJC, he can be fired or resign, just as I can be fired or resign."

Here's another:-

In the fall of last year, Bronfman began pushing for his son to succeed him as president of the WJC. There was talk of Matthew Bronfman being elected at a June meeting, but opposition to his candidacy mounted swiftly. E-mails from WJC headquarters suggest that two Bronfman family loyalists — the organization’s secretary general, Stephen Herbits, and its deputy secretary general, Pinchas Shapiro — suspected Singer of working with those who opposed the younger Bronfman.

In a curt e-mail just a few days before Singer’s firing, Shapiro asked Singer: “I thought you were supporting Matthew for June?”

The tension was heightened by a feud between the WJC’s New York headquarters and the Israeli branch. Singer was chastised for not joining in against the Israelis. In a February e-mail to Singer, Shapiro said: “Though I know we were once on the same side and working together, your opposition to [Matthew Bronfman’s] candidacy (saying one thing to him and his father and another thing to other people) and your position in the Israel fiasco has simply raised doubts in my mind about just what side you are on.”

In his responses to Shapiro’s messages, Singer stated that he was supporting Bronfman, but also insisted that he wanted to stay out of the internal politics. In one e-mail, Singer says he told New York headquarters “that I was not looking forward to more fighting and that I really wanted out of this as soon as possible.”

...The recent e-mails suggest that the Bronfman-Singer pairing is not the only casualty of the recent fights. The author of most of the e-mails, Shapiro, is a man in his 20s who was hired into the WJC by Singer and has often been described as Singer’s protégé and assistant. In their e-mail exchange, though, any good will appears to slip into the past tense.

“You might remember that before you and those around decided that I was your enemy, we worked pretty well together,” Shapiro wrote in one e-mail to Singer.

Singer wrote to Shapiro in desperation: “Why are you doing this to me too? Please, please tell me why?”

And here's yet anothe Pinchas Shapiro:-

Early Wednesday morning, the governing board of The Commentator elected Commie News Editor Shmuli Singer and Yeshiva College Student Council President and former Commie Executive Editor Pinky Shapiro co-Editors-in-Chief for Volume 66. Yehuda Kraut, current Copy Editor, will rise to the post of Managing Editor. Rounding out the Governing Board will be Yehuda Shmidman, the current layout Editor, who will be shouldering the responsibilities of Executive Editor in addition to his layout duties. In a return to tradition abandoned this past year, two people will share the helm of this newspaper.

...Pinchas Shapiro is a 5'4, 130 lbs, blond hair, blue-eyed Yeshiva College student, double majoring in Speech and Political Science and minoring in Writing. He immensely enjoys politics and "cumbersome intellectual hairsplitting with an emphasis on expounded elucidation."

A native of Jackson Heights, Queens, and current resident of North Woodmere, Long Island, Shapiro began his Yeshiva 'early admissions' academic career in 1997, after leaving Yeshiva Tiferet Torah prematurely. "It was an equally amenable situation for both me and YTT because they wanted me to leave and I left," recounts the nascent Editor.

Shapiro, in addition to being Freshman Class President and President of the Debate Society, joined his predecessors Noah Streit and "Pappa" Kahn as a Commentator staff member in 1997, during his debuting semester on campus. He also quickly befriended Editor Emeritus Alex "Gus" Traiman. The following year Shapiro "took a year off from [his] extra curricular activities" and traveled to the Holy Land to learn at Yeshivat Kerem B'Yavneh.

"Shmuli and I hope to see The Commentator continue to exist in the mainstream while fully representing the diverse student body and their opinions. We further plan to build a complete administrative structure, that will allow the newspaper to function successfully long past our tenures," pontificated Shapiro.

Since Shapiro graduated in 2002, he could be the same.

Anyone know for sure?

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UPDATE Mar. 26

Yisrael - Yes, same guy.
keep it good,
Steven I. Weiss

Is Embezzling A Jewish Organizational Problem?

$3.8 million spent without supporting documentation
IAN HAMEL
3 February 2007
Geneva

Auditing company PriceWaterhouseCoopers has discovered an “undocumented” $3.8 million on the WJC’s books. A polite way of saying that the money has vanished into thin air – without supporting documentation

At the beginning of 2004, the World Jewish Congress (WJC), which has its headquarters in New York, closes down its offices in Geneva from one day to the next and dismisses its staff. Utterly shocked, the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities, an umbrella organization for Switzerland’s Jewish communities, calls for explanations. After all, the World Jewish Congress was set up in Geneva in 1936, was it not? In addition, lawyer Daniel Lack, the WJC’s representative at the United Nations, has identified some strange monetary operations. In several transfers, 1.2 million dollars left New York and landed in Geneva, before being transferred to Israel, then to London. Eventually, the money reappears in New York, without any obvious reason.

“Instead of giving us a direct reply, Israel Singer, the president of the Board of the WJC, chose to make a scene in public by distorting the facts, and calling us into question. Nobody was even interested in hearing me,” says Daniel Lack, a foreign lawyer registered at the Geneva bar. Relations between Israel Singer and Switzerland’s Jewish communities have never been particularly cordial. Alfred Donath, president of the FSCI – the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities – leveled harsh criticism at Singer for having called Swiss neutrality during World War II a “crime.” “Unacceptable” accusations, Alfred Donath called these comments.

Serious lapses

As a result of the WJC’s silence, Switzerland’s Jews would insist on an audit being carried out by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. This happened in December 2006 – not an audit but a report, since individuals asked to attend refused to answer questions. The report is damning. The WJC’s financial records and accounts between 1995 and 2004 confirm “the charges that accounts were not kept properly and financial positions were not clear.” Reference can even be made to “serious lapses,” since in addition to the $1.2 million already referred to, an additional $3.8 million are not “documented.” In other words, large amounts have been disbursed in cash for no reason and gone to unknown destinations.

“We want the World Jewish Congress to part company with the leaders who are responsible for this situation, in order to restore the communities’ confidence in the WJC,” Alfred Donath says emphatically, speaking as president of the 18,000 member strong FSCI. He notes that this powerful organization, which has been headed by Edgar Bronfman since 1981, has made a start on re-establishing order in its house. In an editorial which appeared last Friday, Gary Rosenblatt, a journalist with New York’s Jewish Week, expressed the hope that in the future, the World Jewish Congress will spend less time and energy on revenge against fellow Jews who have the audacity to express criticism of it – especially when such criticism is justified.

Try this too -

Demand for Israel Singer’s resignation

Swiss Jews feel that an investigation has confirmed their criticism of the financial conduct of the World Jewish Congress (WJC). Now they’re demanding the resignation of Israel Singer from the WJC’s top leadership

Luzi Bernet

After the conclusion of investigations into financial transactions of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in Geneva, the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities (FSCI), Swiss Jewry’s umbrella organization, is demanding that Israel Singer resign from his positions at the head of the WJC. In addition, the FSCI is calling for an apology for the WJC’s “defamation campaign” against Swiss Jews. These two demands are voiced by the FSCI president, Alfred Donath, when asked about the situation. “It is time for those who are responsible in the World Jewish Congress for these shortcomings in their bookkeeping practices to resign from their positions now,” says Donath, “and that also includes Israel Singer.”

The background to these demands are investigations undertaken by the auditing company of PriceWaterhouseCoopers at the Geneva offices of the WJC. The audit was demanded by the FSCI in April 2004, after rumours about irregularities in the WJC’s accounts made the round in Geneva. Among other things, the WJC’s former secretary-general Israel Singer was suspected of having used monies for personal purposes. Finally, the WJC authorized an independent investigation into the disbursement of $1.2 million which in an unclear fashion made the rounds of New York, Geneva, London and Tel Aviv. The experts also examined the Geneva WJC’s bookkeeping from 1995 to 2004.

For FSCI president Alfred Donath, the investigation confirms the suspicions of “unsatisfactory bookkeeping and a non-transparent financial situation” at the WJC, as a communiqué put it. According to Donath, in the report, in addition to the $1.2 million, another $3.8 million surfaced whose use is completely undocumented. In neither case, admittedly, were the experts able to come up with any proof that illegal transactions had taken place, but, as Donath puts it, “in any case the report shows that the bookkeeping in Geneva was extremely faulty.” The same result was also reached a year ago by an investigation of the then Attorney General of New York. Eliot Spitzer. Singer was required to pay back to the WJC more than $300,000 which he had received in “inappropriate disbursements.”

Because of the FCSI’s demand that the Geneva accounts be checked, the Swiss organization had come under great pressure in the Jewish world. “Instead of re-establishing order in its own house, the WJC fought those who drew attention to irregularities,” says Donath. He himself and other Jewish whistleblowers, he said, had become the objects of a vilification campaign. “The WJC should apologize,” observes Donath. However, for the FCSI, he says, the matter is now closed. They did not intend to report the matter to the police because it was now up to the WJC to deal with things. Donath continues to maintain that his intervention in 2004 was justified. “If we had done nothing, the Swiss Jews would have been accomplices. We couldn’t allow this to happen to us.”

At the WJC, nobody is willing to comment on Donath’s statements. In confidence, however, there is astonishment that the Swiss Jews have gone public now of all times. Nothing has changed recently as far as the facts are concerned. It is intimated that the statements might perhaps have a purely political background. The allusion is to things that are going on in the WJC’s head office in New York, where a public fight over the organization’s leadership has broken out. The WJC’s long-time president, Edgar Bronfman, wants to put his oft-stated intention into practice and retire. He has chosen his son Matthew, who is already on the WJC board, as his successor. Ronald Lauder has protested against such a development. Also active in the WJC for many years, the mega-billionaire wants to take over the organization’s reins himself. The WJC is not a monarchy, Lauder comments.

The Bronfmann-Singer leadership duo is also under attack from the Israeli branch, because the New York head office made staff changes in Jerusalem without agreement. At the same time, a libel suit which the WJC brought in Israel against its internal critic, Isi Leibler, ended with a setback: the association will have to pay $55,000 to its former vice-president.