Two members of the influential Chabad-Lubavitch Rubashkin family were arrested.
Moshe and Sholom Rubashkin were arrested this week after being indicted by a federal grand jury on charges stemming from incidents at a closed textile plant they own. The family also owns AgriProcessors, the country’s largest kosher slaughterhouse.
The U.S. attorney in Philadelphia charged Moshe Rubashkin with leaving hazardous waste at the textile plant in Allentown, Pa., and charged his son Sholom with misleading an investigation into a fire at the plant, according to the Forward.
Moshe Rubashkin is a communal leader in the Chabad enclave of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where he is the chairman of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council. He had served 15 months in prison for writing bad checks from Montex, the now closed plant that specialized in bleaching and dyeing textiles.
The current charge is that he left drums of hazardous waste in the mill after it closed in 2001. A fire broke out there in 2005 that allegedly was exacerbated by the hazardous waste.
Both Rubashkins face up to five years in jail and a $250,000 fine.
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