Montreal man fights to get his life savings returned
AILING 83-YEAR-OLD MAN FIGHTS TO RECOVER LIFE SAVINGS TO ENSURE ‘DECENT BURIAL’
From his earliest years living in a Brooklyn housing project during the Depression through a career consulting for the U.S. State Department in various Cold War hot spots, Jesse Goldstaub developed a knack for extracting himself from trouble.
But now 83 years old and in failing health, he finds himself ensnared in a criminal drug case and fearing he might die without recovering life savings that he says were wrongly seized by the police.
In 2011 after a routine checkup, Goldstaub was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He underwent four rounds of chemotherapy, surgery, then more chemotherapy. Doctors told him his chances of survival were not good.
He had settled in Montreal in the late 1980s. Single with no children or immediate family, he said he forged a close friendship with a man he met at his synagogue, Samuel Szlamkowicz. “We became fast friends. I knew his family. I’ve been alone most of my life,” Goldstaub said this week in an interview at the office of his lawyer, Eric Sutton.
When the cancer diagnosis sunk in, Goldstaub turned to Szlamkowicz for a favour. His Depression-era childhood and a career working in volatile political environments had taught him to value cash and “eschew financial institutions.” He had squirrelled away $200,000 in cash, and in an application filed with Quebec Court on Feb. 7, he says he asked Szlamkowicz to hold his savings for him, along with a copy of his will and a sketch of the tombstone he had picked out.
“I came to Sam and I said, ‘Look, I’m not going to get through this. I’ve got a feeling I’m not going to make it,’ ” Goldstaub said in the interview. “If I need a nursing home, get me to a nursing home. If I need terminal care, just get me there. Otherwise, just get me buried and make sure that whatever’s left over goes to my heirs.”
There was no written agreement, he said, because he trusted his friend’s word more than he would a piece of paper. Szlamkowicz can be arrogant, abrasive even, he said. “But when push comes to shove, he’s one of the most remarkably decent human beings you’ll ever find.”
Last June, his old friend was one of two dozen people charged following a Montreal police investigation targeting marijuana grow operations, Operation Paprika. According to a sworn police affidavit used to obtain a warrant, Szlamkowicz “facilitated” the production of marijuana in apartment buildings he owned. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of marijuana production and conspiracy.
Upon his arrest, police searched a safedeposit box in the name of his daughter and son-in-law and found 40 envelopes containing a total of $200,000 cash. They seized the money, alleging it was the proceeds of crime.
Goldstaub counters that the money is the fruit of his labour and is asking the court to return it to him. A date for a hearing has not been set, but the prosecution is contesting his application.
Earlier this month, Goldstaub, who is a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen, was given a glimmer of hope when he was contacted by the U.S consulate and told a Montreal detective had called the consulate because he wanted to return Goldstaub’s money. “I was beside myself with joy,” he said.
When Sutton called the detective, he was told there was a misunderstanding, and the money was not going to be returned. Sutton said that based on his own subsequent conversation with the consular official, Jeff Osweiler, he has concluded the detective misled Osweiler in an effort to extract personal information about Goldstaub. Sutton said that Osweiler, who told the National Post he could not comment on the matter for privacy reasons, refused to provide police the information being sought and contacted Goldstaub instead.
“It was entirely deceptive,” Sutton said. The detective, Steve Belzile, said he was simply “making verifications” with the consulate but cannot comment further because the matter is before the courts.
Goldstaub said confidentiality agreements prevent him from saying much about his work on behalf of U.S. interests in Central America and Southeast Asia in the 1960s and ’70s.
“What can I tell you about the places I’ve been?” he said. “They were violent. They were corrupt. They were perverse. They were invariably run by familial hierarchies that changed places, and they killed each other for power and money.”
In Nicaragua, Goldstaub ostensibly advised the U.S.-backed regime of Anastasio Somoza on manpower and economic planning. But he discovered that offending the wrong people — including the Nicaraguan dictator — could be hazardous to your health.
“You had to know who you could talk to, what you could say, how far you could go and when you had to run,” he said.
“I was fortunate in the respect that I had enough backing from the people who had me there on contract, who pulled me out. But if I didn’t, I’d be stone-cold dead during the ’60s.”
It was Somoza who ended up dead, assassinated in Paraguay in 1980 by a Sandinista team that riddled his Mercedes sedan with machine-gun fire and blew the roof off with a bazooka. “Beautiful hit. Beautiful hit,” Goldstaub said, describing in detail how the assassins carried out the job. “Be careful, Jesse. … Someone was killed,” Sutton, his lawyer, interjected. “Well, it was done very, very professionally,” Goldstaub said, making sure to clarify, “This is the way I heard it. I wasn’t there.”
When he left the field, Goldstaub held various lecturing and research positions at universities in Canada, the United States and Israel. Although his education was in human resources planning, his expertise was now in terrorism and its impact on multinational corporations.
He said he had developed contacts with “former police, former CIA, former whatever — the warrior class,” and he realized that U.S. corporations were vulnerable as symbols of capitalism and U.S. imperialism.
Asked whether he approached the counterterrorism work as a scholar or as a practitioner, he laughed and took a long pause: “Let me just say as a scholar and leave it at that and say that I had friends who weren’t so scholarly.”
Goldstaub now lives alone in a small apartment in Montreal’s Saint-Laurent borough and says he is “starting to run on empty.” Sutton was in court on his behalf Thursday and will be back next month to set a date for a hearing.
“I just want you to understand that this is yanking my life inside out,” Goldstaub said. “The money isn’t for the money. I can probably make it from here to there with what little I’ve got. It’s just that I hate to be done out of it. And I want enough to give me a decent burial, thank you so very much, which is hopefully not too much to ask.”
WHAT CAN I TELL YOU ABOUT THE PLACES I’VE BEEN? THEY WERE VIOLENT.