OT Strange BBall business in Isreal

[Dekko1]

http://trueslant.com/nealungerleider/20 ... t-scandal/

Tel Aviv rocked by basketball-embezzlement suicide

Imagine if Pat Riley or Bobby Knight was found mysteriously dead and the police suspected him of embezzling from his players. Imagine if one of the country’s best known courtside figures killed himself and noone knows whether he was a junior Madoff or just some poor schmoe who got swindled himself.

That’s what Israel is going through right now. Moni Fanan, who managed the legendary Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team from 1992-2008, hung himself in his north Tel Aviv apartment on October 19. Within a week, Israeli tax authorities raided Maccabi’s offices as word leaked that Fanan was implicated in a massive investment scandal.

It appears that Fanan was fronting for some of the country’s top sports figures in a possible Ponzi scheme; the manager was allegedly running a “private bank” that offered low-interest loans to players and high-yield investments on behalf of legendary ‘runaway financier’ Nicholas Levene. If press reports are accurate, Fanan owed a large group of current and former Maccabi players over US$20 million.

In keeping with the ‘informal’ nature of business in Israel, it appears Maccabi players had been paid their salaries in cash and Fahan had encouraged them to invest with him. Fanan had a reputation as a coach who actively intervened in his players’ personal lives and who tried to serve as a father figure for Maccabi’s many foreign athletes

Reports on Israeli Army Radio and elsewhere indicated that Moni Fanan was a personal friend and business partner of Nicholas Levene. Levene, a British stockbroker who lived in Israel for a time after his family emigrated there, recently disappeared after word got out tht he had embezzled over $100 million. According to the London Evening Standard, Fanan was “Levene’s money channel in Israel.” He was also a father figure to over a dozen highly-paid athletes in their twenties and thirties who were adrift in a foreign culture; in short, the perfect money channel.

As mentioned above, the scandal goes much further than Fanan. Currently under investigation are a Maccabi player, Maccabi’s operations manager and Israel national team coach Tzvika Sherf. The operations manager, Ami Biton, “was in charge of distributing envelopes filled with cash for Fanan among his different clients.” More names are expected to be released shortly.