You know how it is.
Your mom’s the billionaire boss of the ViacomCBS media empire, having emerged victorious from a messy, Succession-style family feud.
You’ve spent your life criss-crossing the globe on airplanes. You’re 35, and you’re dating an 18-year old Israeli model.
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You don’t think the normal rules apply to you.
Perhaps it is not entirely surprising then that Brandon Korff, son of Shari Redstone and grandson of Sumner Redstone, thought he could get away with flouting Israel’s tedious quarantine regulations.
His pressing need to break the health and safety guidelines amid a deadly global pandemic? Hooking up with his beautiful young girlfriend, Yael Shelbia, an 18-year-old Instagram star who has appeared in campaigns for Kim Kardashian’s KKW Beauty makeup line.
No doubt Korff wasn’t expecting to be caught, and, having been caught, it seems unlikely that the scion of one of America’s most prominent billionaire families would have ever imagined he would be thrown out of the country in disgrace.
But that is exactly the fate that befell Korff, who was unceremoniously ejected from Israel on Sunday night after he violated the terms of an “exceptional permit,” which allowed him into the country to visit and stay with his brother, who is serving with the Israeli army.
Korff promptly abandoned his brother’s company in favor of the more compelling charms of his girlfriend.
A statement from the Israeli government said Korff “violated the isolation orders from the moment he entered the country and met his Israeli partner,” and “stayed with her in the same apartment.”
It said Korff, whose mother is the chairwoman of ViacomCBS, was ordered to leave the country immediately.
The Times of Israel said the official statement did not identify Korff’s partner, but Korff is known to be dating Shelbia, a part-time model who is also doing compulsory military service.
Israel banned entry to non-citizens and non-residents in March in an effort to clamp down on the spread of the coronavirus. Israel requires all individuals entering the country to remain in quarantine for two weeks following their arrival.
Unluckily, perhaps, for Korff, the country’s leaders had every reason to come down hard on him; last week, Israel’s health ministry came under fire after an Israeli billionaire businessman, Teddy Sagi, was granted an exemption from the isolation orders only to be spotted attending a party with Israeli celebrities.
Minister of Health Yuli Edelstein issued a statement late last week saying: “No one is above the guidances, not even celebrities or the one percent. No one! The virus does not differentiate between celebrities and ordinary people.”
And nor, it seems, does the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority.
