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Former Israeli Premier Is Sentenced to 6 Years for Bribery Former Israeli Premier Is Sentenced to 6 Years for Bribery
(about 14 hours later)
JERUSALEM — Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, was sentenced Tuesday to six years in prison by a judge who likened him to a “traitor” for taking bribes while mayor of Jerusalem in connection with the construction of a luxury housing development. JERUSALEM — Ehud Olmert, the brash former prime minister who was on the brink of a peace deal with the Palestinians when he was forced from office on corruption charges, on Tuesday became the most prominent former Israeli leader to be sentenced to prison, with a judge giving him six years for taking bribes while likening him to a traitor.
Mr. Olmert, who on Tuesday vowed to appeal his March conviction, would be the highest-ranking official in Israel’s history to serve prison time. The sentence matched the prosecutors’ request; Mr. Olmert’s lawyers had asked that he be required only to do community service. The stiff sentence stunned the political and legal establishment in a country where prosecutors’ anticorruption crusades have been condemned as overzealous and inefficient. In a lengthy indictment against Israel’s top political and financial echelon, Judge David Rozen of Tel Aviv District Court made clear that no leader would escape the law, declaring of public corruption, “The cancer must be uprooted.”
Judge David Rozen of Tel Aviv District Court said that Mr. Olmert and the nine government officials and business figures convicted alongside him had all “harmed the public trust,” and that the former prime minister deserved a harsh sentence because he is a public figure and a clever man. Mr. Olmert, 68, who is known equally for his expensive appetites and warm generosity even to political opponents, promised to appeal to the Supreme Court. Before the 9 a.m. sentencing, he issued a statement calling Tuesday “a sad day, on which a severe and unjust verdict is to be handed down to an innocent man.”
“The cancer must be uprooted,” Judge Rozen said, referring to political corruption. Anshel Pfeffer, a veteran columnist, said on Twitter that the judge was indicting a whole class of “Israel’s financial and political elite.” It was a striking denouement for a man who up until his March conviction had been openly planning a political comeback. Once a right-wing stalwart, Mr. Olmert helped create the centrist Kadima Party in 2005, and was prepared to yield nearly all of the West Bank to the Palestinians before he resigned in 2009. He had lately fashioned himself as a savior of Israel’s waning left, eviscerating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in speeches abroad and imagining that he alone could unite a fragmented field to unseat him.
In a case that analysts here said vindicated prosecutors whose campaigns against corruption had been criticized as overzealous and expensive, Mr. Olmert was found guilty six weeks after a sweeping, yearslong investigation into the planning process surrounding the hulking, hated apartment complex in southern Jerusalem known as Holyland. A judge in 2010 called it “one of the worst corruption affairs in Israeli history.” “He combines everything, power and intelligence. He really was untouchable,” said Anshel Pfeffer, a columnist at the left-leaning Israeli daily Haaretz who has covered Mr. Olmert — and clashed with him — for years. “He’s very talented, very charming, and also very corrupted. He could have been Israel’s best prime minister. Now he’ll be remembered as Israel’s worst.”
Mr. Olmert, who is 68 and was prime minister from 2006 to 2009, released a statement before the 9 a.m. court session saying that Tuesday was “a sad day, on which a severe and unjust verdict is to be handed down to an innocent man.” He arrived at court wearing casual khaki slacks and a royal-blue button-down shirt with a pen in the pocket. The two bribery counts dated to Mr. Olmert’s time as mayor of Jerusalem from 1993 to 2003, and concerned the construction of a hulking and hated apartment complex called Holyland, which looms over the city’s southern landscape like, as one analyst wrote Tuesday, “a row of rotten teeth.” Nine other former government officials and business moguls were convicted alongside him, and on Tuesday seven of them received prison sentences of three to seven years, set to start Sept. 1.
At a sentencing hearing last month, Mr. Olmert said that the guilty verdict had “completely stunned” him and was “based on a fundamental error.” “It’s proof that Israel does have an ambitious, independent, courageous judiciary, and this is very important for any democracy,” said Gad Barzilai, dean of the law faculty at the University of Haifa. “For the Israeli politicians, it’s a red light. The court is saying, ‘Listen guys, we know that you have temptations to do criminal acts, we are going to punish you, we are not going to be intimidated.’ ”
“I never asked for and never received a bribe, neither directly nor indirectly, for myself, my associates or my family,” Mr. Olmert, who served as Jerusalem’s mayor from 1993 to 2003, told Judge Rozen then. “Naturally, the right way for me to appeal the court’s decision is to appeal to the Supreme Court,” he added. “I believe the Supreme Court will make the effort to see the whole picture — that I never got a bribe from anyone. That is the truth.” Corruption has become an increasing public concern in Israel as the state has matured, echoing protest cries in many parts of the world where citizens are increasingly demanding a level playing field and rule of law. Three former ministers were sent to prison for taking bribes or embezzling funds, and a former president is serving time for rape as well as obstruction of justice. But prosecutors failed to press charges after police investigations into Mr. Netanyahu and two other prime ministers, fueling frustrations that Israel’s most powerful were insulated.
But Judge Rozen, in issuing a searing 700-page verdict on March 31, said that Mr. Olmert “told lies in court” and that his version of events “has been rejected by me in every way.” The judge found that half a million shekels — about $144,000 today — had been funneled in a series of postdated checks from a financier hired to ease Holyland’s path through the city planning process to Mr. Olmert’s brother, Yossi. Mr. Olmert, whose supporters suspect that forces infuriated by his political transformation pressed the prosecution against him, beat back election-financing fraud charges in 1998 and escaped jail with a minor breach of trust conviction in 2012 in a separate matter. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s current and former foreign minister, was acquitted in November of charges that dogged him for a decade, dashing public confidence in the campaign against corruption.
Mr. Olmert was ordered Tuesday to pay restitution plus a fine of nearly $300,000. “Many parts of Israeli society were thinking that the police and prosecution were running after politicians, persecuting them without enough basis, and that the whole war against corruption is not really justified,” said Mordechai Kremnitzer, vice president of research at the Israel Democracy Institute. “This is now sending a signal in the opposite direction. It’s an important message that the enforcement of law in Israel is not biased in favor of important people.”
“Olmert got huge sums and it does not matter if it went to his brother or his pocket,” Judge Rozen said Tuesday. “The time that has passed since the crimes is not a reason for leniency.” Mr. Olmert was an accidental prime minister, inheriting the top job in 2006 when his patron, Ariel Sharon, was felled by a stroke. He oversaw the 2006 war in Lebanon that many see as a stain on the Israeli military, a brutal 2008-9 campaign in the Gaza Strip, and a secret 2007 attack on a nuclear reactor in Syria.
He said “the deeds of the convicted undermine the trust of the public in their leaders” and said that they would start their prison terms on Sept. 1. A lawyer with prominent immigrant parents, he was first elected to Parliament at 28, and developed a large cadre of loyalists with an endless flow of favors to journalists, police officers, financiers and sports fans. Not only did Mr. Olmert never forget a name, he never failed to recall a favorite hobby or personal plight.
“The taker of bribes disgusts us, with his power to make the institutions of the state hateful to the public,” the judge added. “The taker of bribes smashes the foundation stone of his work and betrays the trust given him.” He also kept a vast collection of expensive fountain pens and had a hundreds-of-dollars-a-day cigar habit. He flew frequently to New York, and could often be found in the best seats at elite European soccer matches.
Holyland, a series of interlocking luxury apartment buildings that dominates the view for miles, swelled to more than 12 times the height granted in the original permits. Some Jerusalem residents call it “the monster.” Seven of the nine people convicted in the case were sentenced alongside Mr. Olmert on Tuesday, with prison terms from three to seven years; Holyland’s developer, Hillel Charney, is to serve three and a half years and pay a fine of more than $500,000. Lior Chorev, a former adviser, recalled that Mr. Olmert tirelessly raised money when the leader of the opposition to his Jerusalem mayoralty needed a heart transplant and, as health minister from the Likud Party, scoured the world for the finest brain surgeons to help a colleague from the Labor Party.
Mr. Olmert was also convicted of breach of trust in a separate case in 2012, and was questioned by the police recently regarding obstruction of justice related to Holyland. “At times like this you have to look not only at what he was accused of but the things he has done that should be considered,” said Mr. Chorev. “I really hope that his appeal to the Supreme Court will at least lower the burden of punishment.”
Mr. Olmert started his career in the right-wing Likud Party, but left to help create the centrist Kadima Party in 2005, taking over as prime minister after Ariel Sharon suffered a debilitating stroke the next year. Mr. Olmert led a war in Lebanon in 2006 that has been a stain on the Israeli military’s history, and was believed to be on the brink of a peace deal with the Palestinians when he was forced from office under a cloud of corruption investigations. Professor Barzilai said there are two legal issues vulnerable on appeal. The first is that the main prosecution witness, Shmuel Dechner, died before Mr. Olmert’s lawyers had completed their cross-examination. The second is whether there is enough evidence that Mr. Olmert knew about the bribes — about $150,000 that Judge Rozen found Mr. Dechner had funneled to Mr. Olmert’s brother in a series of postdated checks.
Until his March conviction, he had been plotting a possible political comeback, something that seems all but impossible now. Judge Rozen’s determination that his crimes were tainted by “moral turpitude” prevents him from running for public office for seven years. “I never asked for and never received a bribe, neither directly nor indirectly, for myself, my associates, or my family,” the former prime minister said in a pre-sentencing hearing last month.
But Judge Rozen said Tuesday “it does not matter if it went to his brother or his pocket.”
Judges in Israel are appointed by committees where legal professionals outnumber politicians. Three years ago, Mr. Rozen — who has been on the bench for two decades — sentenced a senior tax official to six years for bribery, and on Tuesday some lawyers took issue with his harsh language and extensive denunciation toward those convicted in the Holyland case.
“The taker of bribes disgusts us, with his power to make the institutions of the state hateful to the public,” Judge Rozen said during a hearing that stretched over an hour. “The taker of bribes smashes the foundation stone of his work and betrays the trust given him.”
Israeli politicians from across the spectrum echoed Mr. Olmert in calling Tuesday “a sad day,” but most added that it was an important one for ensuring equality before the law. David Landau, author of “Arik,” a biography of Mr. Sharon published in January, noted that “you don’t hear, at least publicly, any celebrating from his many political rivals.”
“The entire political community, I think, is gulping at this sentence,” Mr. Landau said. “What you hear out there is that gulp, and really, the sense is clear that politicians are going to have to be very, very careful in the future, because this sentence is a precedent.”