Photo Credit: Sasson Tiram for Hebrew University
Former PM Ehud Olmert

On Monday a new chapter will be written in Israel’s annals of politics and crime, as former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (Kadima) enters white-collar Ma’asiyahu prison near Ramla for 27 months for receiving a bribe and deception. Olmert was originally sentenced to six years, but the high court acquitted him on one major indictment. Supreme Court Justice Salim Joubran wrote in his opinion that Olmert “is a public servant who embezzled money and betrayed the public’s trust, for which he must be punished.”

Olmert will be staying at Division 10 at Ma’asiyahu, set up for normative inmates who committed relatively light crimes. He will share a cell with two other inmates, dine at the division’s own mess hall and be able to use the gym. In one year he could appeal for a sentence reduction.

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Danny Dankner and Meir Rabin, two of the defendants who were convicted in the Holy Land Hotel scandal, will also begin serving their sentences on Monday, after Supreme Court Justice Miriam Naor rejected their petition to receive another hearing in their case and to lighten their punishment. Naor ruled that neither defendant’s case revealed any exception that would justify an additional hearing.

Dankner was convicted in the Tel Aviv District Court, along with other defendants, and last month the Supreme court accepted his appeal partially, reducing his sentence from three to two years. Dnakner was convicted of giving bribes and money laundering.

Meir Rabin, who served as an aide to Shmuel Dachner, who ended up turning state’s evidence, was convicted of taking about $350,000 from Dankner, to help the latter re-zone lands owned by his family. He will serve five years, on receiving a bribe and money laundering.

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