Report: March of Living paid questionable funds

By · May 8, 2007

The March of the Living disbursed some $700,000 in questionable payments to an associate of Israel’s suspended finance minister and of Israel Singer, the president of the Claims Conference, according to The New York Jewish Week and Globes.Curtis Hoxter is an associate of Israeli Finance Minister Abraham Hirchson, who has stepped down while being investigated for corruption, and of Singer, who was fired from the World Jewish Congress in March over allegations of financial impropriety. Singer remains president of the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, an umbrella organization that has paid millions of dollars to the March of the Living, a Holocaust education group that brings students to Poland and Israel.According to The Jewish Week report, March of the Living began payments to Hoxter totaling $709,000 in 2003. That was the same year Singer “was instructed to stop funneling unauthorized payments to him via the World Jewish Congress – payments that by then had totaled $657,600,” the newspaper reported.Tax records showed that March of the Living payments to Hoxter took place over three years and purportedly were for fundraising services. But Hoxter has never registered with the New York State attorney general as a fundraiser or fundraising counsel, and said he did not recall specifics of what he did for the payments he received.Singer has denied wrongdoing. His son Eliezer relayed a statement from his father to The Jewish Week saying, “I’m not involved in allocating Claims Conference funds, and certainly have no say or interest in any consultants that grant recipients might choose to hire.”