Former Bikur Holim Hospital chief sues Gaydamak over 'unkept promises'

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Bari Bar-Zion, the former director-general of Jerusalem's Bikur Holim Hospital who saved it from bankruptcy and had it running in the black before it was sold to billionaire and Jerusalem mayor candidate Arkadi Gaydamak, filed a NIS 4 million suit in the Jerusalem Labor Court against the oligarch on Tuesday for "failing to meet his commitments" toward him. Bar-Zion, a Harvard University-trained economist who previously worked in the Treasury, was appointed director-general of the hospital in April 2004 and left in May of these year. He told The Jerusalem Post that Gaydamak had said he was impressed by his management achievements and offered him NIS 140,000 a month in salary plus a bonus of one percent of the hospital's income if he stayed on. But Bar-Zion soon found that "Gaydamak did not carry out what he had agreed orally and in a written contract." The former hospital director-general was replaced, officially on a temporary basis, by the medical director that Bar-Zion himself appointed, gynecologist Dr. Raphael Pollack, who continues as its medical director. Bar-Zion asked the labor court for a lien worth NIS 4 million to be placed on Gaydamak's assets; the court said it would invite both sides in before it decided. The NIS 4 million, said the plaintiff, represents his unpaid salary, bonus, harm to his good name and suffering. No comment was forthcoming from Gaydamak's office.