Claimant and the fact of such agreement is an indicator was that this was not an
unambiguous or unequivocal delivery of a gift to the charity.
77.
Here it is clear that in December 2004, the Claimant was anxious that any transactions
that he had with Trust through the First Defendant should be recorded in writing. The
First Defendant agreed and drew up the text of the agreement, albeit that the parties to
it had already been identified by the Claimant. It is an unusual procedure for a gift,
where the donor can merely transfer the sum usually accompanied by a clear
expression of charitable intent. Those who give sums to charity may also claim tax
relief on it, although as Mr Weiss acknowledged they will usually require a receipt or
other formal proof of the gift to do so. In my judgment the fact that an agreement was
being drawn up at all, in contrast to the transaction in October suggests either some
circumspection by the Claimant in dealing with the First Defendant a second time
with respect to the Trust or that a more complex transaction was envisaged.
78.
Such an indication is reinforced by the absence of a letter of thanks or receipt for what
would be an extremely generous donation, and on the Defendant’s case a further
donation, amounting in total to some £522,000 made over between October and
December 2004. I do not accept that the absence of a receipt is to be explained by
uncertainty as to who to make it out to. Neither the Trust nor any of the Defendants
had dealings with the Claimant’s property companies. They only had dealings with
the Claimant. It was the Claimant who identified the parties to the agreement signed
by both parties in December and if any acknowledgement of delivery and receipt was
to be made it was to the Claimant who had made the transfer of both sums.
79.
Further, making every allowance for the fact that this was a hastily drawn up
document, written in Hebrew by parties whose first language is Yiddish, there are a
number of clear pointers in the text away from this being a donation to charity:i.
The fact that two sums were specified rather than one, suggests that the
two sums had different destinations and different purposes. This is
more consistent with the Claimant’s case that the first sum was a
currency exchange transaction and the second sum was a loan in
connection with property works the charity was undertaking in
Stamford Hill. On the Defendants’ case, all the funds were going to
the charity’s beneficiaries in Israel and there would be no point in
making a distinction between the two sums. Even if the First
Defendant is right that there had been no precise agreement as to the
sum to be transferred before the 23rd December meeting, the
expectation was a significant sum similar to the previous transaction of
October 2005 for £200,000. On the First Defendant’s case therefore the
additional sum would be a fortunate and unanticipated windfall given
for no particular reason.
ii.
The precise amount of the first sum, of £120,445.59 strongly suggests
that it was arrived at by converting back a sum of $250,000 at an
exchange range of about 1.96 dollars to the pound with a variable third
or fourth decimal point. The First Defendant would have known what
rate the charity could obtain for its inter-account transfers and would
have been able to make the calculation as the Claimant suggests. The
Claimant would not have known what rates were available to the