Fifty days before 9/11, Larry Silverstein’s Silverstein Properties and Frank Lowy’s Westfield America secured a 99-year lease on World Trade Center Buildings One, Two, Four and Five.
Frank Lowy is a Hungarian Jew who arrived in Palestine in 1945 to fight with the
Lowy’s fondness for banking is not limited to the U.S. He’s a board member of the
Frank the Zionist is not at all disinterested in world politics.
Other good friends of his include Israeli prime minister
“Australian Entrepreneur Frank Lowy will be Chairman of the planned TAU Institute for National Strategy and Policy. Former US Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk will act as Vice-Chairman.”
And from the
As its chairman, Lowy has gathered some of the most influential policymakers in Israel and wealthiest international benefactors to sit on its boards.
Much like the Lowy Institute in Sydney, it is a respected independent academic institute that studies key issues relating to national security and foreign affairs, but with a special focus on the Middle East.
Its vice-chairman is Dan Meridor, a prominent lawyer and former politician in the centre-right Likud party. Meridor served as justice minister and finance minister in the 1990s, and is contemplating a return to politics with the Likud.
Also on the board are the Israeli building contractor Alfred Akirov, the president of Tel Aviv University and former Israeli ambassador to the US, Itamar Rabinovich, and the Australian-born Martin Indyk, twice the US ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration.
Among those on the board of trustees are Lord David Alliance, an Iranian-born Jewish-British businessman and Liberal Democrat politician, and Sir Ronald Cohen, an Egyptian-born Jewish-British businessman known as “the father of British venture capital” and the man who bankrolled the leadership bid of the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.
Other trustees are the Chicago real estate mogul Lester Crown and the US property tycoon Mortimer Zuckerman, who owns New York’s Daily News and is editor-in-chief of the influential US News & World Report.
Furthermore, Lowy is a founding member of the International Advisory Council of the pro-Israel
But Lowy’s penchant for meddling in world affairs doesn’t stop there. Lowy was vice president of a publication called the
So, like Silverstein, Lowy is without question a filthy rich corporate Israel cheerleader.
They were authorised by Frank Lowy, the head of the Westfield Corporation, who has business and political interests in Israel and whose company is seeking planning permission to develop shopping centres across Britain. Lowy is a veteran campaigner on Jewish causes. He fought as a commando in Palestine during the 1948 Israeli war of independence and served with the Golani Brigade, which is currently serving in the occupied territories.
The disclosure has raised questions of “cash for foreign policy”. MPs expressed concern at Levy’s potentially conflicting roles as a consultant for a powerful multinational company and supposedly impartial and unpaid envoy. Levy said he paid privately for trips he made on behalf of Blair. In a letter to Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, said:
“I am concerned the Foreign Office’s diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East should apparently be so closely tied to the aims of one of the world’s richest men.”
Looks like Lowy thought he could swing things Israel’s way with his
The
Lowy has donated about £200,000 to build a memorial museum in Israel for his former brigade and has toured old battle sites with former comrades. His personal wealth was recently estimated by Forbes magazine at £1.5 billion and he is well known in Australia as a philanthropist supporting Jewish causes. Through the Westfield Foundation he has given to the United Israel Appeal, an organisation for resettling Jewish immigrants in Israel. His family was last year preparing to invest more than £30m in property and media interests in Israel.
Look what Lowy
Lowy implicated in Israel bank scandal
PM – Wednesday, 25 October , 2006
One of Australia’s richest businessmen has been embroiled in a high-level corruption scandal involving the Prime Minister of Israel.
Israeli press reports claim that the billionaire owner of the Westfield Group,
They allege that
The Justice Ministry is investigating suspicions that Mr Olmert interfered with the tender to benefit Mr Lowy and another bidder, Daniel Abraham.
There are also allegations of a conflict of interest by the Prime Minister through a law firm that dealt with Mr Lowy’s affairs in Israel.
The head of that firm is Ehud Olmert’s father-in-law Professor Yossi Gross.
A spokesman for Frank Lowy is rejecting the claims tonight.
Emma Alberici reports
EMMA ALBERICI: Overnight Israel Attorney General confirmed he was investigating claims that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accepted bribes from two international businessmen.
The bribes have allegedly been paid to help advance their interests during the 2005 privatisation of Israel’s Bank Leumi, the country’s second biggest bank.
The two businessmen referred to in reports are said to be
Various reports during the tender process last year said the Australian real estate tycoon was in partnership on the Bank Leumi bid with American media and property mogul
The website News First Class, first published the claims two weeks ago, which also say Ehud Olmert never declared a conflict of interest he had during the tender process.
His father-in-law, Yossi Gross heads the law firm, which allegedly deals with Frank Lowy’s affairs in Israel
Frank Lowy is a Holocaust survivor who
55 years on, he’s the country’s second richest businessman, worth $5.5 billion.
In March of this year,
Media reports over the past few years variously link the Lowy family name to the sales of three banks in Israel.
Israel’s Attorney General has ordered the probe into claims that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accepted the bribes while he was Acting Finance Minister.
Lowy’s business partners in the bid for Bank Leumi were mega-Zionist billionaires
So at the very least, Lowy is
David Lowy is manager of the Tel Aviv-based
Frank Lowy has a
Peter Lowy, when called on by the
But senators tried to make up for his silence, offering accounts of shadowy shell corporations, secret transactions, mysterious acquisitions, exotic locations, all topped off by allegations of a late-night flight by Lowy this month to avoid a government subpoena. […]
The subcommittee, chaired by [Senator Carl] Levin, released the results of a six-month investigation last week detailing the practice, estimating that it cost the Treasury $100 billion a year. Many of the allegations come from documents provided by a former LGT employee to authorities in the U.S. and other countries.
“The Greenfield and Lowy case histories unfold like spy novels, with secret meetings, hidden funds, shell corporations, captive foundations and complex offshore transactions spanning the globe from the United States to Liechtenstein, Switzerland, the British Virgin Islands, Australia and Hong Kong,” Levin said. […]
The Lowy family released a statement saying that it had met its tax obligations in the United States and Australia, that the money in question was legally held in Liechtenstein, and that it was “distributed for charitable purposes in Israel some years ago without claiming a tax deduction.”
But Levin said the Lowy family had refused to give the subcommittee information about the donations.
“The Lowy family engaged in layer upon layer upon layer … of activity to hide assets in a Liechtenstein bank,” Levin said after the hearing. “We’ve got to end it.”
Senator Levin would later use similar language when speaking to the press. “The complex structure that was set up and the movement of tens of millions of dollars from Liechtenstein to a Swiss bank seemed like facts more out of a spy novel than related to a normal bank account,” he told
The Lowy family’s
wekeyleaks.com 