Two years ago the state of Israel began selling a national bank, Leumi, to private investors. One of those investors was Ezra Merkin. That's him, shaking hands with Sharon in the picture at left. That picture was in today's Times, the only foto it apparently had for a piece on a Merkin fund called Ascot that gave all $1.8 billion that Merkin had raised from investors to Bernard Madoff. Merkin sent his investors a short note last week announcing the problem, just a couple years after he'd sent them a 54-page prospectus full of who-knows-what.
So Merkin put all his eggs in Madoff's basket. What are the consequences to Israel and by extension the lobby? (Times doesn't touch this angle.)
