Meyer Lansky Interview, 1971

Meyer Lansky was the real life model for the Hyman Roth character in The Godfather Part II. There is no doubt that Lansky was an organized crime figure -- a childhood friend of Lucky Luciano -- sometimes known as "the Mob's accountant." The extent of his involvement has been the subject of considerable dispute, with exaggerated estimates of his wealth running as high as $200 million. At his death, however, he left an estate of only $57,000. Like the fictional Hyman Roth, Lansky did make an arrangement, on behalf of a consortium of mobsters, to operate casinos in Cuba, which was aborted when Fidel Castro's revolution ousted Fulgencio Batista.

For all of his notoriety, Lansky was never convicted of any crime other than illegal gambling. Nonetheless, he fled to Israel to avoid arrest for tax evasion. He was denied Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return when the interior minister determined that his criminal past rendered him a threat to public order. The Israeli Supreme Court upheld the denial, and Lansky was eventually forced to return to the United States. After all of that, he was convicted of contempt in a grand jury proceeding, but that was reversed on appeal. He died of lung cancer in 1983.

Here is an interview of Lansky, conducted in 1971 for Israeli television, in which he denies everything:

The Israeli side of the story is after the jump.

Here is an interview with Gabriel Bach, prosecutor in the 1962 Adolph Eichmann trial, who was instrumental in denying Lansky's application for Israeli citizenship:

 

Comments

[Enrique Guerra Pujol (priorprobability.com)]

Was the decision to deny Lansky citizenship the legally "correct" one under the Law of Return?