43. The essential issue in this case requires the resolution of this conflict of accounts between the Claimant Rabbi Meisels and the First Defendant Mr. Lichtman. The Claimant seeks to support his account of the meeting with the First Defendant by calling his personal assistant, driver and property manager Mr. Hochauser. Mr. Hochauser claims to have been present throughout the whole of the meeting and heard the full conversation with Mr. Fisher. The First Defendant says that Mr. Hochauser only arrived at the end of the meeting and could not have heard the full discussion leading to the agreement. 44. I accept the Defendant’s submission that I should be cautious about relying on Mr. Hochauser’s evidence. There is a real risk that he is giving evidence tailored to support that of the Claimant in the light of a number of inconsistencies in his account and his professed strong personal loyalty to the Claimant who he regards as a father figure. The inconsistencies include:i) The Claimant and the First Defendant are agreed that the call to Mr. Fisher was made on a mobile phone. Mr. Hochauser was not present in court when the Claimant gave this evidence. When he gave evidence he said the call was made on the office phone. ii) Mr. Hochauser seemed to remember greater details of the conversation with Mr. Fisher than did the Claimant. If he was present in the room at the time of the conversation, he was not a participant in the discussion, and his grasp of what Mr. Fisher saying at the other end of a phone would have been limited, even if the phone was on speaker mode which is a disputed issue. iii) Mr. Hochauser has a third version of the sequence of the events leading to the transaction. I would not expect him to remember this degree of detail and the differences with the Claimant’s version are surprising. 45. I can accept Mr Hochauser’s evidence that this meeting took place in the morning of the 23rd December as that accords with Mr. Weiss’s recollection of when the first transfer was made following the First Defendant’s return to the Trust’s office. Whilst I can broadly accept the evidence of the Second and Third Defendants, that was not substantially challenged, they can give no direct assistance on the nature of the arrangements made between the two principal parties. I further accept the evidence of Mr. Fisher that will be considered separately below. He was a forceful and emphatic witness. 46. Clearly the Trust was in the habit of making and receiving loans and also making and receiving gifts. It is the First Defendant who sought out and persuaded donors to give or lend, and he ultimately decided the fate of the monies in the UK Charity, where they were to be sent and for what purpose. In my judgment the central question is with what intentions were the two sums transferred to YLJT that day? The subsequent events 47. Before resolving the conflict in the evidence the subsequent history can be recounted. Later in the day, following the meeting the Claimant was driven to the airport to catch a plane to Jerusalem leaving at 10.00pm and arriving the following morning Friday 24th December. There were contested issues as to when the ticket for this journey was

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