charity, and would only have known that this would be a more
favourable rate than transmission through a bank or currency exchange
office where commissions and a discount on the full spot rate were
likely to diminish the amount received.
iii.
It is clear that the parties to the transaction were concerned at
specifying the immediately available dollar conversion rate. This is
consistent with the Claimant’s case but makes little sense on the
Defendants’. The First Defendant's proffered explanation that the gift
was to be expressed in dollars to make it seem more generous is
unconvincing having regard to the fact that the sum recorded is not in
dollars, and the two sums are not aggregated and converted to dollars.
iv.
It is much more difficult to ascertain how the precise sum in the second
transaction came to be calculated. The First Defendant says that the
Claimant asked his solicitor to clean out the balance in one of his
company accounts, but the client account records from David
Wineman suggest that this was not done and a small balance remained
in the account after transfer (see [95 (ii)] below).
v.
If the First Defendant calculated the sums for the first transaction, it is
more plausible that he did so for the second transaction. There is no
evidence that the money went to pay off a bank loan for the property
transaction on the Craven Walk synagogue but it is possible that the
charity’s urgent needs were represented to the Claimant by reference to
immediate needs for financing the property development, and bank
charges and interest payments might have come to the odd sum that
was eventually recorded. I conclude overall that it is more probable
that the sum was calculated by the First Defendant rather than by the
Claimant.
vi.
The second sum specifically refers to repayment as a loan. This is the
only word used to characterise either of the transactions in question.
The absence of the Hebrew word for a gift is striking. The suggestion
that these words were intended to mean that in return for a gift, the
First Defendant would use reasonable endeavours to obtain a loan to be
paid to the Claimant's accountant seems a very tortured reading of an
admittedly imprecise text. The Defendants suggest that the Claimant
was asset rich but could be cash poor; but if he was so concerned about
the need to replace the capital he was giving away that he wanted
assistance with a loan, it seems more likely that he would be willing to
make the payment as a loan to the charity, to be repaid when requested.
The charity undoubtedly was in the business of accepting loans from
others for long or short term projects as the accounts books
demonstrate. I conclude that it is much more probable that the
agreement was referring to repayment to the accountant of the sums
paid over to the Trust as a loan.
vii.
Admittedly there is a lack of clarity and detail that one would expect
to see in a commercial document: when the loan was repayable; to
precisely who; whether interest was to be paid and the like. However