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Court lifts reporting gag on case of the millionaire, the rabbi and the '$1m offer'

Legal Affairs Correspondent,Robert Verkaik
Wednesday 14 May 2003 00:00 BST

A multimillionaire businessman who allegedly offered a husband $1m (£620,000) so he could marry his wife was a family friend of the couple who had an "emotional relationship" with the woman, a court was told yesterday.

Brian Maccaba, 45, first met the young Orthodox Jewish housewife when she was a teacher at a London infants school where he was a "patron". But his barrister insisted yesterday that they had never had a physical relationship.

Several newspapers have published a letter Mr Maccaba is alleged to have written to the couple, Alan and Nathalie Attar, in which he suggested that the $1m was a "golden key" to "set her free" and a chance for her husband to regain "his bachelor's freedom".

The allegations have echoes of the 1993 film Indecent Proposal, in which Robert Redford starred as a millionaire playboy who offers $1m to a couple, played by Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore, if she agrees to spend a night with him.

Mr Maccaba, a 45-year-old married father from Hendon, north London, is suing a rabbi, Yaakov Lichtenstein, for allegedly spreading rumours about him, including accusations that he is a known adulterer who pursued young Jewish newlyweds.

Mr Maccaba's barrister, Clive Freedman QC, told the High Court in London that his client and Mrs Attar, 34, had had a 12-month "non-physical" relationship, which ended when a financial dispute led to Mrs Attar's "termination of employment" at the school.

Until this point, Mr Freedman said, his client had been "treated as a member of the Attar family". It was after the dispute that the allegation of trying to bribe Mr Attar to give up his wife was first levelled at Mr Maccaba, the court heard.

The dispute, including the so-called indecent proposal, was eventually settled by the Beth Din, a Jewish court, which ruled in May 2001 that none of the allegations against Mr Maccaba, an Irish Catholic convert to Judaism, was proven.

Mr Freedman said that Mrs Attar apologised to Mr Maccaba at the end of the Beth Din hearing and that the couples remained on good terms. "The allegation is a stale allegation, 18 months after the end of the emotional relationship ... And had only occurred in the context of a financial dispute," added Mr Freedman.

He said that once the Beth Din dismissed the allegations, the only reference to the "alleged offer made to Mr Attar" was a "potential allusion" in a poem written by Mr Maccaba, which he gave to Mrs Attar.

The case in the High Court involves allegations against Rabbi Lichtenstein of slander, breach of confidence and harassment. Mr Freedman said Rabbi Lichtenstein, a leading dayan, or judge, of the Beth Din, obtained the poems and other documents in breach of Mr Maccaba's confidence.

He alleged that the rabbi summoned Mr Maccaba to a private meeting in which he offered to do nothing with the poems if Mr Maccaba dropped all allegations against him and started treating him as a friend rather than a "foe".

"If not, the poems would be published to the damage of the claimant [Mr Maccaba]," said Mr Freedman. When Mr Maccaba refused, Mr Freedman said the rabbi "was as good as his word" and published them.

The case, said Mr Freedman yesterday, also concerned Rabbi Lichtenstein's "fitness for office", claiming that he had also been attempted to solicit a bribe from a young rabbi. In return for the rabbi being given the prestigious title of dayan, it was to be arranged that Mr Maccaba, the chief executive officer and founder of the international technology company Cognotec, would pay $100,000, the court was told.

Yesterday Mr Justice Eady agreed to Mr Maccaba's application to lift reporting restrictions on the case after Mr Freedman had argued that it would be "harmful" for the embargo on the ruling by a High Court judge, Mr Justice Morland, to continue as it "encouraged a distortion in the press coverage of the matter".

Mr Freedman said this was a distortion that led to the case "being reported in a rather one-sided manner". If Mr Justice Morland's ruling was before the newspapers, they would see there were other issues in the case about the "fitness or otherwise" of the defendant to hold office.

But Martin Cruddace, the rabbi's solicitor, argued that allowing reporting of Mr Justice Morland's judgment could enable the press to be "fed" with matters from it "that could rubbish my client".

Mr Freedman said the action had already attracted "worldwide" publicity. He told the judge: "You will have seen from the evidence how the story has travelled to New York, Israel, India, Australia and throughout Europe."

Rabbi Lichtenstein, who is the senior judge in the Beth Din, or rabbinical court, of the Federation of Synagogues, denies all the allegations against him.

Lifting the ban, Mr Justice Eady said that it was unrealistic to suppose that reporting of the proceedings before Mr Justice Morland would add significantly to the prejudice engendered by previous publicity in the media.

The judge said he was quite satisfied that any jury would focus on the totality of the evidence and not on any inaccurate or incomplete reporting. He pointed out that the trial was unlikely to be heard before March next year and it had not yet been determined whether it would involve a jury.

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