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Israeli police recommend Olmert face trial on bribery charge

Israel Materials 23 August 2010 17:57 (UTC +04:00)
Former Israeli premier Ehud Olmert should be indicted on corruption charges connected with an alleged bribery scandal involving a massive construction project in southern Jerusalem, police said Monday.
Israeli police recommend Olmert face trial on bribery charge

Former Israeli premier Ehud Olmert should be indicted on corruption charges connected with an alleged bribery scandal involving a massive construction project in southern Jerusalem, police said Monday, DPA reported.

Olmert, who was Mayor of Jerusalem when the project got underway, will likely be charged with accepting a bribe in order to advance the interests of real-estate developers involved in a project called Holyland.

He allegedly received the bribes when Jerusalem mayor, and then when Minister of Trade and Industry after his mayoralty ended in 2003.

Police recommended that Olmert's former aid Shula Zaken, businessman Hillel Charni and Uri Lupolianski, Olmert's successor as Jerusalem Mayor, also be indicted.

When the scandal broke in April this year, police suspected that, between 1999 and 2008, the Holyland Development Company and associated land developers paid tens of millions of dollars in bribes to senior decision makers in the Jerusalem municipality, members of its planning and construction committee, and officials in the Israel Land Administration.

At stake was approval for the luxury Holyland housing project in south-west Jerusalem and additional projects in the north of the country.

In a televised address, made after a gag order was lifted to reveal he was one of the chief suspects in the affair, Olmert declared that he "was never offered a bribe, and never accepted a bribe from anyone, in any way, either directly or indirectly."

He termed the allegations against him "unprecedented character assassination."

Olmert is currently facing trial over other corruption allegations.

The Holyland affair, as it is known, shocked Israelis and is being talked of as one of the biggest corruption scandals in the country's history.

Police suspect the total amount of money, transferred from the project's initiators to a middleman who mediated between the parties involved, stands at 15 million dollars.

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