Tel Aviv – Former prime minister Ehud Olmert on Thursday filed an appeal to the Supreme Court to overturn his conviction for fraud under aggravated circumstances and subsequent eight-month prison sentence in the Talansky retrial.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
Olmert also requested from the court that the start of his sentence be delayed, pending the appeal.
Olmert was sentenced in May after the the Jerusalem District Court had convicted him in March of illegally receiving, using and concealing at least $153,950 (out of an alleged $600,000) in funds in envelopes from New York businessman Morris Talansky between 1993 and 2002, with the case itself dating back to 2008.
The jail sentence was Olmert’s second following a six year sentence he received in the Holyland real estate trial on a conviction for bribery.
He has appealed that conviction and sentence to the Supreme Court as well.
Olmert’s March conviction in the Talansky retrial reversed his earlier acquittal by the same court in the same case. The retrial involved new evidence based on recordings, a journal and testimony by former top Olmert aide-turned-state’s-witness Shula Zaken, none of which was available for his original trial in July 2012.
The underlying allegations were that Olmert illegally received and concealed over $600,000 in envelopes from Talansky. The court found that the Zaken recordings, her journal and much of her testimony was acceptable as evidence even at this late stage, post acquittal, and that the evidence changed its conclusion from acquittal to conviction.
It said that the state had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that at least $153,950 of the more than $600,000 Olmert was accused of using for illegal personal use was in fact used illegally.
Most significantly, the court found that a recording of Olmert telling Zaken she could take funds from the secret safe for her illegal use contradicted and torpedoed his narrative that he did not know about the moneys or assumed they were being used for permitted political purposes.
The court said that Olmert’s statements to Zaken in the recordings eliminated the slight doubt they had about his awareness of the funds being used illegally, which had paved the way to his 2012 acquittal.
Content is provided courtesy of the Jerusalem Post
Appealing? does he really think any judge will believe he is innocent
Why do they keep referring to this as the “Talansky Case, Talansky Trial or Talansky Retrial”? This is all about Olmert and his personal actions. Talansky was put under the microscope by our alphabet agencies and cleared of any wrong doing.