FNB's R800,000 For My Silence

ONE of the couNtry’s Best known rabbis has broken a 16-year silence to reveal to Noseweek an extraordinary deal in which he agreed not to “go public” with the revelation that his FNB safety deposit box had been plundered by a bank employee.

 

In return for Rabbi Hirsch Rosenblum’s silence, First National Bank would not press him to pay its legal costs totalling around R800,000. The inducement, which many might consider a form of extortion, was made by FNB after the bank won a Supreme Court of Appeal test case against the rabbi in 2001. Judge RM Marais ordered Rosenblum to pay all FNB’s legal costs, which included two counsel at the appeal, and all the bank’s earlier high court costs.

“But I didn’t have to pay them,” says Rosenblum now. “FNB said if I wouldn’t go public, they would make a deal that I don’t pay their costs. If I kept quiet.”

“We had a Krugerrand bracelet and necklaces. There were heirlooms from my wife’s family that go back 200 years: blue and white diamond earrings. I had a IWC Schaffhausen gold watch and rabbinic papers that are totally irreplaceable.”

Rabbi Rosenblum, a 74-year-old native New Yorker from Brooklyn, was spiritual leader of the Emmarentia Shul in Joburg for 37 years. He retired at the beginning of 2016.