Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was formally indicted on three counts of corruption on Sunday, concluding a lengthy criminal investigation that had forced him to resign.
According to the 61-page indictment, which the attorney general, Menachem Mazuz, and the state prosecution presented to the Jerusalem District Court, Mr. Olmert is accused of crimes including fraud, breach of trust, falsifying corporate records and failing to report income. If convicted, he could face years in prison.
Mr. Olmert has always denied wrongdoing. On Sunday, his media adviser, Amir Dan, said in a statement that the attorney general and state prosecutors, having brought down a prime minister, had no choice but to press charges against Mr. Olmert. The court, on the other hand, is free from such considerations, Mr. Dan added. “Mr. Olmert,” he said, “is therefore convinced that he can prove his innocence once and for all in court.”
The charges stem from three main episodes that unfolded over the last two years, as evidence turned up by investigators in one matter led them to another. All the cases relate to the period when Mr. Olmert served as mayor of Jerusalem and as a government minister, but before he became prime minister in 2006.
The most sensational of the three cases involved Morris Talansky, a Long Island businessman, from whom Mr. Olmert is alleged to have received more than $600,000, partly in cash-stuffed envelopes, from 1997 to 2005. Prosecutors accuse Mr. Olmert of hiding the money and failing to report it to the authorities. Though Mr. Olmert has not been charged with taking bribes in the Talansky case, he is accused of abusing his position as a government minister to promote Mr. Talansky’s private business interests in Israel and abroad, constituting a major conflict of interest.
Mr. Olmert is also charged with fraudulently billing multiple entities, including state agencies and charities, for trips abroad during his time in government. He is accused of amassing a secret credit account of more than $92,000 at his travel agency, which he used to finance private and family travel. The indictment includes a chart documenting more than a dozen trips that Mr. Olmert took to the United States, Europe, the Far East and other destinations, and charged two or more agencies for, from 2002 to 2005.
In a third scandal, Mr. Olmert is charged with promoting the interests of the clients of a longtime associate and former law partner, Uri Messer, while Mr. Olmert served as the minister of industry and trade. Mr. Messer, according to the indictment, provided Mr. Olmert with various services, including running a “secret fund” with cash from Mr. Talansky and other sources that was kept in a safe in Mr. Messer’s office, and later in a safe at a bank.
Mr. Olmert is also charged with failing to report funds that he received from other sources, including another American citizen, to the state comptroller, as he was required to do as a minister. Shula Zaken, Mr. Olmert’s close confidante and former office manager, was also indicted in connection with the various counts of fraud. She was also charged with illegal wiretapping. According to the indictment, Ms. Zaken secretly listened in on Mr. Olmert’s meetings, or got other staff members to do so, as a matter of routine.
Mr. Olmert resigned under intense public and political pressure last fall. He was already unpopular as a prime minister, largely because of what many Israelis saw as the debacle of the 2006 Lebanon war, but his political fate was sealed when Mr. Talansky, 76, a resident of Woodsburgh in Nassau County, took the stand in an early deposition here in May 2008.
Israelis were shocked by Mr. Talansky’s narrative of how he had transferred huge sums of cash to Mr. Olmert. Mr. Talansky said that much of the money was for election campaigns, but that some was for Mr. Olmert’s personal use.
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