Secretary General of the Kingdom’s Jewish Community Council Serge Berdugo is suspected of usurping the title deeds to thirty-one Jewish-owned properties worth several hundred million shekels, according to News 1.
At present, an in-depth investigation “…will enable the extent of these monopolies to be measured, give light on a process marked by recurring dispossession practices, and confirm allegations of appropriation of property left by deceased Jews in Morocco or elsewhere.”
The assets of Jews in financially vulnerable situations are in the possession of Berdugo and his relatives, said the same source.
Documents revealed by News 1 reflect the true scale of Jewish property sequestered for the benefit of just a few. These appropriations have alarmed senior Israeli officials in several countries, who are seeking to demystify the originating source.
Lawyer Jacques Berdugo, who happened to have resided in Morocco, is said to have left his brother, Serge Berdugo, an ordinary-looking inheritance. The inheritance order–dated September, 2018–was signed by Yossef Haïm Israël, a rabbinical judge subordinate to Serge Berdugo.
It would seem that this document would have enabled Serge Berdugo to appropriate the assets of numerous Jews who had apparently–at least at face value–suspiciously ceded their property to their lawyer, Maître Jacques Berdugo, through their respective wills.
For almost three years Jacques Berdugo and his associates have been working to seize numerous properties, while his brother Serge claims to be the legal heir.
To prove his own claims while simultaneously refuting competing family members’ claims to the properties, he has appealed to Rabbinical Judge (Dayan) Yossef Haïm Israël, who has provided him with documents confirming his title to the property by virtue of being the heir of his brother, Jacques Berdugo.
This case concerns many important personalities–including Israeli nationals–specifically, descendants of Moroccan Jews who had departed the Kingdom in the 1950s during emigration from Morocco to France and to other countries, and to Israel itself shortly after its creation. These Jews abandoned all their possessions, including valuable real estate assets. Certain leaders of the Jewish community who remained in Morocco then commandeered these assets and refused to return them to their rightful owners.