March 3, 2009 News

No extortion: Rosenshein

Former student union VP defends himself

by Terrine Friday

Concordia student and former student executive Steven Rosenshein has denied all allegations of an attempted extortion in the amount of $25,000.

The accusations, made by the Concordia Student Union’s former health care broker Lev Bukhman, claim Rosenshein demanded the sum on March 6, 2008—the week before CSU election campaigns began—in order to finance funding for his chosen slate.

According to Bukhman, Rosenshein tried to solicit the money after a lecture by American civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton.

“I never asked him for any money, or money for myself for any political party,” Rosenshein said. “Why would I try to solicit a bribe in front of 900 people for a campaign that didn’t exist? There was no political campaign, there was only one party [running for office].”

Rosenshein is currently pursuing legal action to quash the claim.

In Bukhman’s sworn affidavit, Steven Rosenshein allegedly requested $25,000 because “the ‘opposition’ had been traditionally backed by ‘15 or 20’ thousand dollars from the ‘Muslim students associations’ [sic], and that the Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) basically [ran] its own printing press for elections,’” according to the document.

Both SPHR and the Muslim Student Association have since denied the allegations.

“That’s completely false. We’ve never given any sum of money to any political party,” said Tarek Younis, president of the MSA. “As a student club, that wouldn’t make much sense to contribute money, considering we don’t get much to begin with. And we don’t even get $15-20,000. We would have to save up a whole year and then some to be able to give that kind of money.”

“We own no printing press. There’s no such thing,” said Mounir Habib, president of SPHR-Concordia. Habib called the allegations “a cheap attempt” to undermine the organization. “Our mandate is to advocate for Palestinian human rights. We have no ties to Concordia or the CSU in our mandate.”

For the full story, please see “$25,000 extortion attempt denied” at thelinknewspaper.ca.