Court Orders Gutnick to Pay Fellow Lubavitcher $1M
Mining magnate Yoseph Gutnick, one of Australia’s most senior Chabad rabbis, has been ordered to pay A$1 million after a judge found him guilty of “misleading and deceptive conduct” in a business deal with a fellow Lubavitcher in Melbourne.
Justice Ross Robson of the Supreme Court of Victoria last week found in favor of Roy Raphael Tashi, who in 2010 was convinced by Gutnick to buy A$1 million worth of shares in Northern Capital Resources Corporation, a Canadian gold mining company founded by Gutnick.
Having lost his lucrative job and facing the prospect of having to sell his multi-million-dollar home, Tashi believed letters he faxed to the grave of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe asking for a “miracle” had borne fruit when Gutnick offered him the shares at a “bargain price.”
Instead, he was left with shares that Gutnick knew were “probably close to worthless,” Justice Robson wrote in his blistering 80-page judgment.
“Mr. Gutnick’s behavior was not that of a friend assisting another in trouble,” the judge wrote. “Rather, I find that it was predatory behavior in which Mr Gutnick was primarily motivated by enriching himself at Mr Tashi’s expense.”
Tashi didn’t question the deal because he knew Gutnick was a “very generous individual” and, in the absence of financial statements and disclosures, he “totally relied on Mr Gutnick’s goodwill towards him,” the judgment stated.
He said he would not have bought the shares if he knew he was “buying at market price, at no bargain.” When he asked Gutnick to buy some of the shares back in 2011, the latter refused.
Justice Robson ordered the share sale agreement be declared void and Gutnick to pay Tashi A$1 million with interest.
In one of several letters faxed to the Rebbe’s grave that were cited in the judgment, Tashi wrote: “If you can further intervene and provide a ‘miracle’ that brings about a windfall financial gain in one form or another I will share this with the community with at least 20 percent going to tzedekah [charity] as well as taking it upon myself to be more observant.”
Tashi told Haaretz this week he was “obviously delighted with the result” but unhappy that his letters to the Rebbe had been published.
“I was disturbed that my letters to the Rebbe were made public in court,” he said. “They’d not been seen by my rabbi or my wife.”
Tashi added that he was “not uncomfortable” taking a fellow Lubavitcher to a secular court, because he “got advice from my [Chabad] rabbi.”
Gutnick, 61, denied any wrongdoing during the court case in April. He declined to comment on the judgment when contacted in New York this week, except to say his legal team may consider an appeal “in the coming days.”
Gutnick was appointed by the late Lubavitcher Rebbe to the post of “Special Emissary to the Integrity of the Land of Israel.” He is one of three chief Chabad rabbis in Melbourne sanctioned by Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn.
A replica of the Chabad U.S. headquarters that he built a replica in Melbourne in 2001 was opened by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Gutnick is credited with assisting Netanyahu’s 1996 Israeli election victory by bankrolling the controversial “Bibi is good for the Jews” campaign.
Virtually wiped out in the 1987 stock market crash, Gutnick claims the Rebbe told him in 1988 exactly where to mine in Western Australia.
He was soon dubbed “Diamond Joe” as a result. The father of 11 has disbursed millions in philanthropy in Australia and Israel and has accrued a wealth estimated at $285 million, according to Business Review Weekly magazine’s 2013 rich list.
He recently relocated to Singapore, whose government lures investors with tax incentives. He is reportedly in the process of establishing a Chabad house in the tiny city-state, which he says has “no anti-Semitism.”
Tashi said he joined the Chabad movement about 25 years ago and is a director of a Chabad house in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern. Gutnick previously donated $250,000 for a preschool at the center.
The chair of the Community Security Group in Melbourne, Tashi is also a former president of the Mount Scopus College Foundation and a life governor of the college, life member of Jewish Care and life governor of Montefiore Homes, two aged-care organizations. He was awarded the Order of Australia in 2006 for “service to the Jewish community.”
can't beleive it
its all about the money haval
Wow
Such a holy man to cheat his fellow like that. Must be some previously hidden chassidic concept that only he can understand.
BH
Didan notzach!!
The Eibeshter pays back who is right and just at the end of the day.
KVT
Ch'er
Why is it necessary to publish this story for the public? It has no personal bearing for the readers of this site and is just plain spreading negativity about another Jew. Hardly a good preparation for Rosh Hashana
LESSON
Mr Tashi thought that it was a good investment, and R Gutnick too
Obviously Mr Tashi lost his bitochon in the Rebbe’s brachos
He should have known that this temporal loss was a test to activate his bitochon and get the real brachos
I experienced something similar with Great Central Mines in the 90s At that time we thought that we were going to get rich with that stock, we lost, at that time for me .a young boy,more than 25000 was a small fortune, but BH then H game me more than a 200 times more my loss
if you get the bracha ,it’s just a matter of time and bitochon
Meshuga
Really? Hedging your frumkeit on the Rebbe’s brochos is the right thing to do? So, do you think he became less “observant” once he learned that Joe NoGutnik had swindled him? According to your twisted logic, that would make sense.
what a chilul lubavitch
this is not crown heights shmutz……
why bring the story overseas . we here in melbourne are dying a 100 deaths. is it not enough?
Jake
נשאת ונתת באמונה?
just terrible
ah shanda
# 5
And are you supposed to tell the your grocer, the yeshivos, the electric company that wants to cut all your power and the bank that has a mortgage on your house and is foreclosing that they should just “work on their bitochon” and wait patiently til the “real brochos” arrive ? You say that you were a young boy when you suffered your financial loss – trust me, it’s a very different experience when you have many financial responsibilities & a family that is counting on you …
At this time of the year, let’s remember that how one conducts themselves in business is even more important than how mehuder your esrog is !
to # 10
When we called to ask the Rebbe’s brocho,
Rabbi Groner asked ” could you say kaddish on the money?” if you can say kaddish on the money there is a general Rebbe’s bracha to buy
Dumb
Again, why must you blame the victim? Joe cheated his fellow Jews. Why make it into something it isn’t?
Complete melt down
Gutnick lost because he closed down the Melbourne smicha program, when you stop supporting torah institutions and they close down you lose the Rebbes brochos, shame he didnt take example from the Rebbe & Frediker Rebbe who were moser nefesh to support even ‘outside’ torah institutions ( wasn’t it the Frediker Rebbe who bailed out Torah V’das ).
But diamond Joe stopped supporting a mosed he himself named after his own late father Chaim, and 3 people have lost parnosa so what do you expect he should pay back this guy?
Joe the simple truth is that when you give hashem gives back double and then some, the more you give the more brochos you get.
writing letters to the ohel
Unfortunately letters emailed or faxed in are not above being spoken about and I have had first hand experience in this as the information on my personal letter a few years ago was discussed with an individual that is not employed by the ohel , and he called me regarding it . Interesting to note is that my letter didn’t even have my phone on it as I was certainly not expecting a phone about it.
I sent it in to the gravesite knowing that there wouldn’t be an answer coming from there so you can imagine my surprise and shock at being called from a number in the community counsel regarding what was personal and written and sent with the intention of only being put at the rebbes resting place,
It is certainly something we should remember that our letters are being handled by human hands and not heavenly ones and the frailty of human beings is that they tend to err . Even with good intentions at times.
This however was not one of those times.
To the man who breached my trust in him, you know you are and it was a betrayal on your part giving over some ones personal information to another .
You did not have permission.
and as far as I know Rabbainu Gershom’s issur of not reading another letters is still in effect As is the other of not marrying more than one wife.
fair
he got cheated so whether hes alubavitcher or not he needs a parnassa.
Yaakov
To the person who claimed that the article
was loshon horo:
Unfortunately there are business people
who, for years, get away with cheating fellow
yidden. Mr Tashi is not the first to have suffered
this trauma. There is a large line of people who
have been tricked into buying worthless stock
Tashi is probably the first who has taken
action and had the person exposed.
Those that cheat others on an ongoing basis
often get away with it , because the public is
confused as to who is right and who is wrong
The serial ganav preys on vulnerable
and ignorant people.
The publication of the Judges findings
in this article is very important , as it will hopefully
warn Anash and others about dealing with
such people, no matter how many letters
the Rebbe wrote to that person.
Mendy Cohen
Yossel G is not the only Yossel in Australia that tricked fellow Lubavitchers into giving away all of their earnings, destroyed their lives and then told them where to go. Like Yossel G, only one person so far took the other Yossel to Beis Din and was won. That too was recently published thank God.
finally
as others have said – its about time the truth about all this comes out.
Too many people over the years have been sucked in based on false pretences and lies and they have lost too much for all of this to be continuously hidden away.
The public needs to be warned….