That’s right. On those 254 acres – former abode of a farm school belonging to Don Bosco’s heirs – a new gigantic suburb will rise. Jerusalem’s authorities have already okayed the construction of approximately 4.300 flats, whose average market value as of today would exceed half a million euros each. The brand new neighborhood will rise not far from the Beit Jimal monastery and the town of Beit Shemesh, in an area where ultra-orthodox Jews with large families are an overwhelming majority. Eventually the estate could house up to 40 thousand people.
It looked like a done deal, however in the past year things have gotten complicated. The Salesian missionaries have “sold” the land more than once and have signed “long-term leases” with competing companies. The State Secretary himself, Pietro Parolin, on account of the order’s muddle, has given the Vatican’s clearance (canon law states that, in the case of financial operations exceeding one million euros, catholic congregations are to obtain express authority from the Holy See) to two rival groups. Namely, the one belonging to businesswoman Ziva Cohen and the one led by Aka Development, a company that is run by the wealthy Carasso family.
It was Aka who, a few months ago, formally accused the clerics and the Vatican of double-crossing, while also accusing its rivals of foul play. Last October the AIF (the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority which specializes in combating money-laundering) received a complaint of “suspicious activities” against Ziva Cohen’s group. The complaint was signed by a rotal lawyer hired by Aka, Francesco Carozza.
Aka, who fears to lose the tens of million euros it has already spent, also points the finger at the congregation, whose financial strategies are the work of general treasurer Jean Paul Muller – a man from Luxembourg who has been managing the order’s bulging coffers from via Marsala, Rome, since 2011.
The Espresso has also revealed that the Salesians’ main legal consultant in the Beit Jimal deal is David Shimron, personal lawyer to Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu. Shimron is feared and respected in Tel Aviv and he recently ended up more than once on the news, not only because he has to represent the prime minister against the corruption charges that have swamped him over the past few days. Shimron himself was in fact accused of corruption and money laundering by the police, regarding Israel’s purchase of submarines and battleships built by the German giant Thyssenkrupp.
Now, how is it possible that the same plot of land was repeatedly given to competing subjects by the missionaries? And how come the Holy See granted more than one authorization to different companies to carry out speculation on that one estate? Let us look at things in the right order. It all began in September 2004, when property developer Ziva Cohen (a businesswoman who, according to the complaint received by AIF, was “criminally convicted for fraud” in 2017) set eyes on the evangelizers’ land.
As the decades went by, both the farm school and the orphanage had to close down. The olive trees, the vineyard and prayer remained the missionaries’ main activities. However, at the start of the new millennium the Vatican realized that the tumultuous demographic and urban development of the area, situated halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, was turning the land which Don Belloni had bought for just a few pennies into a potential gold mine.
Cohen knew the area was about to become available for construction. She therefore used three of her companies to make a long-term lease proposal to the priests. The proposal – as we read in the complaint to AIF submitted by Aka’s lawyer – “envisaged the payment of 24 million dollars” to the Salesians for leasing the land. The order instantly accepted. However, the validity of the proposal was subject to one preliminary requirement: the approval of the same “from the Holy See”. Both in 2005 and in 2007 – says Aka – permission was declined.
The reasons for this are unknown. The fact remained, though, that neither the Salesians nor the estate developer gave up. They made a new deal through another one of the developer’s companies, Kidmat Eden, this time for actual land development. By reading the papers it surfaces that Cohen would receive a commission of 17 per cent of the overall value of the trade upon success of the land development project. That’s a lot of money.
Given how difficult it would be to obtain clearance from Rome, Cohen had an apostille added to the contract: should the priests decide, in the future, to sell or sublet the land to other subjects, Cohen and her company would enjoy a right of preemption.
According to the complaint filed by Aka against AIF, this agreement too was never ratified by the Vatican. So much so that, after a few years, unable to carry out their real estate project, Cohen and the Salesians ended up at loggerheads. An arbitration award established that “the order was to compensate Kidmat Eden for preventing it, in bad faith, from developing the land”. The amount of the compensation was set at 40 million Israeli shekels, equal to over 10 million dollars.
Was this the end of the story? Not even close. The seasons went by, new popes and secretaries of state replaced the old ones, and in 2013 treasurer Muller entrusted attorney Shimron with the task of finding new buyers for the land. This time the choice fell on Aka Development. Its representatives have recently told the Espresso that the contract with the Salesians was signed in 2015, “after Shimron, acting on behalf of the convent, had offered the land to various property developers, advertising it as vacant and available”.
This time too, the agreement between the Salesians and Aka envisaged a long-term lease. Compared to ten years earlier though, the real estate market was now skyrocketing and the new partners agreed to pay to the missionaries – as we read in the document – no less than 300 million shekels, equal to 80 million dollars. For the first time, on August 12th 2015, the Secretariat of State led by Parolin gave the long-awaited clearance: as declared by the then envoy for Israel Giuseppe Lazzarotto in a letter to the Salesians’ General Vicar Francesco Cereda, “the Holy See has confirmed that the Salesians of Don Bosco are authorized to enter a long-term lease agreement with Aka”. Immediately after that, Aka paid the Salesians a first instalment of 45 million shekels. Simultaneously the priests (still according to what was written to AIF by the rotal lawyer) declared Cohen’s old preemptive right as “null and void”.
In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth. Cohen and her Kidmat Eden sued everyone, and in March 2018 – when Aka’s speculation project was about to begin – the Supreme Court of Israel confirmed the validity of Cohen’s right of preemption, who had been “charged with fraud”. Sure enough, Aka challenged the decision in court.
And what did the Salesians do? Instead of waiting for the outcome of the legal battle, Muller and Shimron changed horses in midstream again. They dumped their mates from Aka and signed a third agreement with two other companies attributable to Ziva Cohen: Ramat Beit Shemesh Flowers and Stenden Company. The latter is believed by Aka to be a trustee hiding “third-party beneficiaries whose identity is unknown”, as we read in a statement released by the Vatican’s anti-bribery attorney.
Last April 2018 saw yet another speculation agreement, which stated, on one hand, that the land should be leased for 98 years, and on the other hand, that Cohen’s legal team together with the Salesians’ (Shimron’s practice) should receive a share of the final return from the property sales. This amounted to 0.875 per cent of the final business profits. Should all the apartments be sold for which the municipality has given authorization, the middlemen would each pocket tens of million dollars. According to Aka, the compensation could eventually reach 30 per cent of the total amount cashed in by the Salesians for leasing the land. “A mad commission”.
“Shimron charged with corruption and Cohen sentenced for fraud? Feel free to write that I have no problem doing business with them. David is an earnest man, and we as an order have done nothing wrong. We have only complied with a verdict from the Israeli judges. Aka knew all too well about the existence of that preemption clause and they chose to take a risk”, explains Muller.
By reading the congregation’s private correspondence, it appears clear that it was the treasurer from Luxembourg, together with the Salesians’ vicar don Cereda, who prompted Parolin – who in 2015 approved the operation with Aka – to sign another permission in 2018 in favor of Cohen’s companies.
The new authorization was entered in register of documents on September 17 of last year. When the envoy for Israel Leopoldo Girelli gave the news to Aka, who were sure to have their way in court given the authorization they got in 2015, the battle became heated. It has stretched out from the Holy Land to the Eternal City. Aka has denounced a conspiracy and maintains that Parolin quotes in the new permission “a contract with Kidmat that never existed”. The Espresso reached out to sources close to the Secretariat of State, who claim that the double clearance is in no way unlawful or contradictory. “What Aka fails to recall, is that it was former Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone who, on June 22nd 2010, gave a first authorization to the Salesian priests. This was a deliberately broad permission, that gave the congregation freedom to negotiate the most convenient agreement, without having to indicate any preordained subject, nor any deadline for the sale of the land”, claim Parolin’s men. “All we did was confirming, every time, the authorization already in force since 2010, which is so generic that it can be applied to any given company. Having said that, we hope for a peaceful resolution of the dispute”.
Billions are at stake, and reaching a settlement won’t be easy. Who knows whether Don Belloni would have imagined that a bare plot of land bought to build an orphanage would unleash, 150 years later, such appetites.
