Madoff Trustee Sues Israeli Universities, Hospitals

Irving Picard claims that the institutions should have to repay tainted donations originating in Bernard Madoff’s massive fraud.

Globes is reporting that Picard has filed a NIS 367 million ($95 million) lawsuit against a number of Israeli academic and health institutions in Tel Aviv District Court. The suit alleges that through the Yeshaya Horowitz Association, the institutions unknowingly received stolen money at the expense of Madoff’s innocent victims, and are refusing to restore the money obtained through theft and fraud to its legal owners.

The institutions being sued include: the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for $36 million, Ben Gurion University of the Negev for $18 million, the Weizmann Institute for $13 million, Bar Ilan University for $10 million, Tel Aviv University for $6.5 million, Technion Israel Institute of Technology for $4 million, and Sheba Medical Center for $2.3 million. The technology commercialization companies of these institutions are also being sued, as are the University of Haifa, the Jerusalem Spinoza Institute, the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, the Rambam Health Care Campus, the Schneider’s Children Medical Center, the Kaplan Medical Center, the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov Hospital) in Tel Aviv, Clalit Health Services, and others.