Olmert guilty of taking bribes
In one of the most dramatic court rulings that Israel has ever seen, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been found guilty in a bribery trial.
Judge David Rozen concluded that he accepted 560,000 shekels ($173,000) in bribes from a property developer to facilitate the Holyland residential project in Jerusalem during his decade as the city’s mayor from 1993. Rozen found him guilty of two bribery charges.
Olmert will be sentenced later this month, and is expected to serve at least seven years in jail. But whatever the exact length of the sentence, Monday will be remembered as the day when Israel’s Mr Bulletproof could no longer deflect what was coming to him.
In July 2012, Olmert was cleared of what were then thought to be the most important corruption allegations that saw him abruptly leave office four years earlier. It was not a full acquittal – he was found guilty of breach of trust – but he acted as if it was. “I leave court today walking tall,” he said back then, and two months later a court left the door open for his political comeback, ruling that he hadn’t committed “moral turpitude.”
In fact, it’s possible that if it hadn’t been for Israel’s Gaza operation of late 2012 which grabbed the news agenda at precisely the time when he was expected to announce his candidacy for the election shortly afterwards, he would have stood to return as Prime Minister, and maybe even triumphed.
The remaining case against Olmert, which focused around the Holyland development, seemed for months to be moving very slowly, until late last week when there was an earthquake of sorts. Shula Zaken, Olmert’s former bureau chief who had defended him to the hilt, suddenly turned against him, signing a plea bargain and giving a full account of events to the prosecution. The judge, Rozen, criticised Zaken for covering up for Olmert, and she is expected to serve almost a year in jail in line with the plea bargain.
The scandal wasn’t limited to Olmert and Zaken. Olmert’s successor as Jerusalem mayor Uri Lupolianski was convicted for receiving bribes from the same housing development and using a charity to cover them up. Lupolianski is renowned for founding the Yad Sarah organisation which lends out medical equipment, and which he used to cover his tracks after accepting bribes.
Seven other defendants were convicted, including Uri Shitrit, Jerusalem’s former chief engineer and Holyland project owner Hillel Cherney.
The reverberations of Monday’s ruling are felt in numerous areas of Israeli life.
In the political sphere, this seems to be the end of the dream of some on the centre-left that Olmert will rise from his political grave, get the Israeli public behind him, return to the Prime Minister’s office and complete the peace deal with the Palestinians which some say was tantalisingly close when scandal forced him from office. He is headed behind bars, and even afterwards it seems a stretch to imagine that he could pick himself up and win public trust.
In the Charedi community, the verdict dethrones one of the most popular figures, Lupolianski, who is adored by many for his years as Jerusalem mayor and his work for Yad Sarah.
In towns and cities around the country, the ruling is a warning for mayors and municipal officials to tread carefully in what can be the murky waters of their relationships with developers. It could bring about a cleaner local politics.
But perhaps more than anything, this ruling ends the dismay in the Israeli legal system. Its teeth were starting to be viewed as blunt. In November, a major case against politician Avigdor Lieberman ended with a whimper, after the state prosecution gambled away major charges and focused on an incidental charge, believing that it was a safe bet. It failed, Lieberman was acquitted and returned to his post of Foreign Minister, and there was widespread mockery of its ability to deal with corruption. Now, its strength has been restored.
Yet it is hard to take any comfort from this case, which exposed disturbing practices in Israel’s capital and holiest city, and a story of cover-up that continued until almost the last moment in the trial. Soon, Israel will have both a former President – rapist Moshe Katsav – and a former Prime Minister in jail.
Israelis hope that this is the last of their country’s major scandals involving leaders – but are not putting their money on it.
NATHAN JEFFAY
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