Declaring the the World Zionist Organization’s $745,000 budget deficit is unacceptable, the organization’s newly elected chairman has vowed to eliminate duplication and inefficiency.
“I do not intend to head a body whose budget is built in this way, and I will not agree to run a system operating at a deficit, with duplicate systems and organizational inefficiencies,” Avraham Burg said at a WZO Executive meeting last week.
Burg, a Labor member of Knesset, was recently elected acting chairman of the WZO and the Jewish Agency for Israel. He will officially be named chairman in June.
The WZO undertakes Jewish educational efforts in the Diaspora and provides the mechanism for Diaspora Zionist organizations to participate in Jewish Agency decisions. The Jewish Agency is the primary recipient of funds raised for Israel by the United Jewish Appeal in the United States.
The WZO’s annual budget, which it receives from the Jewish Agency, now stands at $30 million.
To cope with the deficit, Burg appointed an ad hoc committee, headed by Agency and WZO Treasurer Hanan Ben Yehuda, to examine ways to deal with the existing deficit and to recommend cuts in WZO activities and operations.
Burg instructed the treasurer to freeze all the organization’s financial reserves until the committee submits its report to the Zionist Executive.
The 1996 budget will be structured according to new guidelines based on the organization’s needs and priorities, Burg said.
Budget preparation and planning procedures will be re-evaluated, he said adding that sanctions may be imposed on anyone who does not meet the new guidelines.
In a related development, the Jewish Agency’s comptroller report has exposed a series of financial irregularities at the Agency that reflected poor administration, improper management and bookkeeping, and lack of accountability
The report, which was to be submitted to the Agency’s plenum in June, was leaked last week to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz.
According to the report, Renana Guttman, Agency comptroller, found that all the irregularities occurred between 1992 and 1993. The findings apparently did not involve any criminal activities, so Guttman has not asked that they be handed over to the police for investigation.
But Ben Yehuda said all the improprieties have already been rectified.
Sources close to the process who did not wish to be identified suggested that the comptroller’s report was leaked as part of political power struggles within the Jewish Agency.
Burg, who was attending an aliyah emissaries conference in Moscow, reacted to the Ha’aretz report in a written statement: “Ever since I entered this job, I am surprised to discover every morning the pin of a hand grenade — past matters that have not been dealt with and procedures that need rectifying.”
Burg said he intends to “bring about a swift correction of all improprieties.”
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