NEW YORK — Federal and city agents have seized records from a Brooklyn fund-raising group with close ties to New York Democratic Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a prominent Orthodox Jew.
Agents from the Internal Revenue Service, the Postal Inspection Service and the city’s Department of Investigations on Tuesday of last week carted off files, financial records and computer data from the politically influential Council of Jewish Organizations of Boro Park, or COJO.
Officials said they are investigating $1 million in unaccounted-for government and charitable funds.
Investigators believe the council and its affiliates may have illegally diverted much of the money for personal use.
Citing information first disclosed more than one year ago in the Jewish Week, one law enforcement official said, “Money went where it shouldn’t have gone.”
The Boro Park COJO, with a budget of almost $5 million, provides a wide array of social services to the local community, ranging from English classes for Russian immigrants to job placement assistance and small business development consulting.
But as law enforcement authorities combed through the office with the determined air of “an army invading a war field,” as one community member put it, some onlookers outside seemed in no rush to come to the group’s defense.
“The community is glad about this,” said one spectator, who would identify himself only as Heshy. COJO’s leadership, he said, “were only out for themselves.”
Hikind has obtained hundreds of thousands in state dollars for the organization, which COJO and its affiliates, in turn, doled out to scores of consultants and grant recipients.
And while COJO officials repeatedly have refused to give a public accounting of this money, an investigation by the Jewish Week revealed that Hikind’s own aides, political advisers and at least one of his relatives were among the recipients.
Law enforcement authorities, however, termed speculation that Hikind was a target of their investigation “premature.”
“It could go either way,” said one law enforcement official. “If [the Jewish Week’s] reports are correct, there may be something there.”
Hikind, who has told reporters he plans to run for Congress in 1998, said this week he would have no comment on the investigation until it is completed.
Hikind has denied reports that he pressured COJO officials to provide jobs to his associates in exchange for funding he obtained.
The law enforcement source, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, also said it was premature when asked if COJO of Boro Park Deputy Director Elimelech Naiman was a target of the investigation.
Naiman, until recently a longtime fund-raiser for Hikind, is also a rabbi and the president of one of the COJO affiliates that distributed many of the funds in question.
Naiman, who has raised money for numerous other city, state and federal politicians, is also a leading activist on behalf of the Ger Chassidim, a major Orthodox group with bases in Brooklyn and Israel.
Located in the heart of one of New York’s most heavily Orthodox Jewish communities, the Boro Park council has been the focus of a year-long probe by city and federal authorities.
Aides to state Attorney General Dennis Vacco, who has jurisdiction over charity fraud cases, said early this year that their office, too, was investigating COJO.
Questions in particular arose over the fact that some 93 percent of the COJO charity affiliates’ program expenditures went to unnamed consultants and grant recipients, plus the Hikind associates.
As COJO’s problems mounted in the weeks and months leading up to this week’s raid, the agency is known to have turned away several offers from other Jewish agencies to help put its financial house in order.
Last summer, for example, UJA-Federation officials in New York offered their accounting expertise.