Chasdei Levy Yitzcok

Chasdei Levy Yitzcok

A 2018 CRA audit, undertaken for the fiscal years 2015-2016, determined that the Montreal-based Chasdei Levy Yitzcok (CLY) had demonstrated a widespread failure in issuing proper donation receipts and had failed to carry on its own charitable activity. Speaking directly to the charity’s direction and control over its sole Israeli intermediary, one Rabbi Israel Levy, the CRA would note that CLY could provide no documentation to “confirm any interaction” between the charity and its Israeli agent(s), or that the agent(s) actually “performed any work” for the charity.

The CRA determined that CLY had issued cheques, totalling over $2.7 million CDN, to several “foreign residents”, during the fiscal year of 2016. In certain instances, the CRA found that representatives of CLY were just cashing cheques they had written to themselves. Expanding their investigation to include the Canada Border Service Agency, the CRA determined that none of the foreign residents named as recipients by CLY had legally entered Canada within a five-year time span prior to the audit; the inference being that they had never received their cheques, let alone cashed them. These findings caused the CRA to conclude that in 2016, “over $2,700,000 of the Organization’s charitable resources were converted to cash without any documentary evidence to show that the funds were used in a charitable manner”.

See also

• Canadian Jewish or Zionist charities revoked by the Canada Revenue Agency since 1992