Former Israeli PM Olmert found guilty of corruption charge‎

JERUSALEM – Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been found guilty of a corruption charge but acquitted of two other key counts, capping a five-year court saga that has plunged the country into uncharted legal waters.

“He had faced a maximum of five years and it now looks like he will serve about four months of community service.”

The verdicts on Tuesday cover three separate cases: illegally accepting funds from an American supporter, double-billing Jewish groups for trips abroad and giving jobs to unqualified political cronies.

The American supporter has testified to giving Olmert hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of it in envelopes stuffed with cash. Olmert has denied any wrongdoing.

The trial covered offenses allegedly committed before Olmert became prime minister, while he served as mayor of Jerusalem and later as a Cabinet minister. The charges were filed only after he became premier.

Olmert’s legal woes do not end with Tuesday’s verdict.

He is still facing a separate trial in which he is accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to promote a contentious Jerusalem building project when he was the city’s mayor and later the Cabinet minister of industry and trade.

The flurry of allegations hurt Olmert’s chances of reaching a peace deal with the Palestinians. Olmert claimed to be close to an accord just as he was driven from the premiership.

Since leaving office, Olmert has said he offered the Palestinians a peace deal under which Israel would have ceded about 93.5 per cent of the occupied West Bank, along with Israeli territory to make up for the 6.5 per cent of the West Bank land that Israel would retain.

He also proposed international administration of east Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy sites.

At the time, the Palestinians’ chief negotiator said they turned down the offer because they were not willing to compromise over full control of east Jerusalem. Negotiations have been largely frozen since Olmert left office.

There were other instances of corruption in Olmert’s Cabinet. His former finance minister was sentenced to five years for embezzlement, and another member of his Cabinet was sentenced to four years for taking bribes.

Neither case occurred while the two were in the Cabinet.

Last year, former Israeli president Moshe Katsav was sentenced to seven years in prison after being convicted of rape and other sex crimes. He served as president from 2000 to 2007.

Olmert faced corruption accusations throughout his long political career but has never been convicted.

The 66-year-old Olmert has largely stayed out of the public eye since stepping down.

A veteran politician known less as a statesman than as a backroom dealmaker, Olmert was catapulted unexpectedly into the country’s top job when a stroke incapacitated his predecessor, Ariel Sharon.