Dulzin Maligned in Bank Leumi Scandal, Claims His Wife

Leon Dulzin, chairman of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) and Jewish Agency Executives, was unfairly treated in the recent Bank Leumi severance pay scandal, according to his wife.

Dulzin was nominal head, not chief executive officer, of the bank when it was rocked in January by the disclosure that its chairman, Ernst Japhet, had resigned with $5 million severance pay and a $30,000 monthly pension, according to Annette Dulzin.

She told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that “there was a misrepresentation as far as my husband’s position. He never was the governor of Bank Leumi.” WZO appoints the board of the Jewish Colonial Trust, which owns a substantial number of bank shares, all of which JTA reported. She added that as WZO chairman her husband is a non-voting board member of the bank.

Dulzin announced last month that he would not stand for re-election as chairman of the Executives after Diaspora leaders stated that he had acted with “full integrity” regarding the bank.

Mrs. Dulzin, a newspaper columnist who was visiting Detroit as a scholar-in-residence of the Detroit Zionist Federation, said her husband could have dismissed the bank’s board. “Perhaps that’s what he should have done,” she said. “Although he would perhaps have been called a hero, he also could have precipitated a run on the bank.”

She acknowledged that he could have reacted more quickly to the news of the scandal, but she said that the fact that he didn’t come immediately forward with an alibi demonstrated his innocence.

Is he embittered by the turn of events? She began answering in the affirmative, then changed her mind. “He has a kind of character that doesn’t look back,” she said. “Perhaps I’m ascribing to him my feelings.”

She commented that her husband, 73, hasn’t made plans for retirement yet. “I’m sure he hasn’t yet had time to think of the future,” she said.