Israel Billionaire Leviev Mired in New York Property

Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev told a roomful of reporters in August at the beachside Tel Aviv Crowne Plaza hotel he owns that his Africa-Israel Investments Ltd. would seek to restructure about $2 billion of debt.

“Our biggest mistake was our investments in the U.S.,” said the diamond mogul turned real estate investor, who just two years earlier was ranked by the Israeli newspaper TheMarker as the country’s richest man. The revelation, in Leviev’s Russian- accented Hebrew, rocked Israel’s markets, sending its benchmark stock index to its biggest drop since June.