Irish multi-millionaire sues rabbi over ‘indecent proposal’

TAKE one Irish multi-millionaire businessman, a rabbi and another man’s wife. Throw in $1m and some sexual innuendo and what you get is a ‘Jewish Indecent Proposal’.

The case has not surprisingly attracted international attention, with its echoes of the infamous 1993 Hollywood film Indecent Proposal, starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore.

The businessman at the centre of the case is Brian Maccaba, CEO and founder of Dublin-based international technology company Cognotec. He denies claims by Rabbi Dayan Yaakov Lichtenstein that he made a $1m offer to another man to take his wife for life.

The 45-year-old married father won a courtroom battle yesterday over reporting restrictions in the case. Mr Maccaba, who is suing the rabbi over the allegation, successfully persuaded a High Court judge to lift a reporting ban on a pre-trial ruling made in the case in December.

Mr Maccaba, with an address at Hendon, north London, is seeking damages against Rabbi Lichtenstein for slander. The action brought by the businessman, who was present in court for the all-day hearing before Mr Justice Eady in London, centres on claims that Rabbi Lichtenstein spread sexual smears about him after he allegedly offered Alan Attar $1 million to let wife Nathalie spend the rest of her life with him.

Clive Freedman QC, for Mr Maccaba, had argued it would be “harmful” for the reporting ban to continue as it “encouraged a distortion in press coverage of the matter”. He said the businessman’s relationship with Mrs Attar was at all times “non-physical”.

But solicitor Martin Cruddace, for the rabbi, said as well as defending the slander action the rabbi was faced with defending an “attack on his livelihood”.

There was an allegation the defendant attempted to solicit a bribe in return for the conferral upon another rabbi of the title of Dayan (Jewish judge). Rabbi Lichtenstein, the senior judge in the Beth Din, or rabbinical court, of the Federation of Synagogues, denies making slanderous comments. Mr Cruddace said Mrs Attar, who is eight and a half months pregnant, was an orthodox Jew who was “horrified” by the press attention. She and her husband are understood to be in Israel.