Kupas Hachesed Meoroth
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- In 2018, the CRA informed Kupas Hachesed Meoroth (KHM) that it was unable to verify the validity of donations, totaling over $32 million CDN, receipted between 2014-15.
- In a further investigation into KHM’s “wire transfer information”, the CRA determined that only $100,862 of the tens of millions of dollars CDN claimed by KHM could be verified as having been sent to Israel between 2014-2016. The regulator noted that: “the majority of the funds spent on foreign activities were actually given to individuals residing in Canada and cashed at Canadian bank accounts”. These funds, which totalled over $48 million between 2013-2016, had apparently been delivered to an unknown number of Canadian and American recipients in the form of hundreds of unique cheques, typically written out to an individual by first initial and last name only. In numerous instances, cheques made out to multiple addressees were cashed via a shared bank account.
- KHM director Edward Binet (2007-2020) would defend the cheque cashing operation and claimed that the recipients deposited their cheques and then hand delivered millions of dollars in hard cash to (unnamed) recipients in Israel, who arrived in Israel by airplane. KHM, however, had no supporting documentation to suggest that the cash handovers had ever taken place. The entire situation forced the CRA to conclude that: “it does not appear that any charitable activity occurred, whether within or outside of Canada” and that “it appears the Organization is simply gifting funds to individuals and conferring an unacceptable private benefit”.
- KHM’s charitable status appears to have been put on some kind of hiatus between 2017-2019; the organization did not file tax returns for this period. In 2020, KHM was operational for what appears to be three more years, into 2022, although tax filings for these years are incomplete. Binet, for his part, appears to have suffered no legal repercussions for having presided over KHM. As of writing, Binet remains the president of multiple, active, Montreal-based, charities, including ‘Congrégation Beltz’, which donated close to $2 million to KHM and another transgressional charity, Chasdei Levy Yitzcok.[1]