Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appeared Tuesday at the Jerusalem Supreme Court to appeal his sentence in the Talansky case.
Olmert was sentenced on May 25, 2015 to eight months in jail for the scandal in which he received hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from New York businessman Moshe Talansky.
He also was fined NIS 150,00 ($37,000). The jail sentence followed a sentence of six years in prison for the Holyland apartments bribery scandal. Olmert was convicted of accepting bribes in return for facilitating the real estate project in Jerusalem’s Bayit Vegan neighborhood while serving as mayor of the city.
That six year prison term, however, was reduced by the Supreme Court to 18 months a year and a half later.
Olmert was acquitted last month (Dec. 29, 2015) on a major portion of his 2014 conviction.
Israel’s Supreme Court accepted Olmert’s argument regarding the state’s failure to prove he actually received half a million shekels in bribes as mayor of Jerusalem in the Holyland affair.
The court did, however, retain the former prime minister’s conviction on receiving a bribe of NIS 60,000 during his tenure as Minister of Industry.