EXIT THROUGH THE MANDELBAUM GATE
"The punishment could have been worse," said Moshe Mandelbaum, governor of the Bank of Israel, when he was about to resign on the orders of the Bejski Commission. "They could have asked me to stay."
The commission's report, published on April 21, censured Mandelbaum for not stopping the manipulation of bank share prices, carried out by the four biggest commercial banks of Israek until the system came down with a crash in October 1983.
"The commission did not blame me for what I did," Mandelbaum told Euromoney. "On the contrary. But they said I did not do it early enough. I don't agree. I think I acted at the right time, and I'm happy that I did."
He added that the report did not debar him from working elsewhere in the banking system. This makes him something of a rarity, in a country whose biggest banks have been neatly beheaded at one stroke. Ernest Japhet, chairman of Bank Leumi, Aharon Meir, chief executive officer of United Mizrahi Bank, Ephraim Reiner, former chairman of Bank Hapoalim, and Raphael Recanati, chairman of Israel Discount Bank, were all informed by the report that they were unfit to hold any senior position in the Israel banking system.