Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been found guilty of accepting bribes in a corruption retrial at Jerusalem District Court.

Monday's verdict found that the 69-year-old former statesman, who was Prime Minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, illegally accepted US$153,950 from US businessman Morris Talansky while serving in earlier roles as a cabinet minister.

He was found guilty of fraud and breach of trust.

The same court had cleared Olmert in 2012 on a series of fraud charges, including allegations that he received envelopes stuffed with hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from Talansky when he was mayor of Jerusalem and, later, a cabinet minister.

At that time, Jerusalem District Court acquitted Olmert of fraud, breach of trust, tax evasion and falsifying corporate records. They found him guilty only of the lesser charge of steering contracts and job roles to clients of a different businessman, in a case known as the Investment Center affair.

The 2012 verdict was seen as a victory for Olmert, who had announced his resignation as prime minister in 2008 amid mounting graft allegations, but always denied wrongdoing. He claimed that he had been on the brink of a historic peace deal with the Palestinians when he quit, to be replaced by hardliner Binyamin Netanyahu.

But Olmert's former office manager Shula Zaken, who was convicted in the 2012 trial on charges of fraud and breach of trust, would later hand over recordings of conversations between herself and Olmert as part of a plea bargain.

In the tapes, Olmert can be heard telling Zaken not to testify during the trial so as not to incriminate him. The evidence triggered a retrial.

Monday's verdict saw a tentative end to the protracted affair, as the court found Olmert had indeed accepted cash-filled envelopes to the value of US$153,950, which he accepted in return for favors and used for personal purposes without declaring it.

He kept the illicit funds in an aide's safe, and shared a cut with Zaken in exchange for her loyalty.

Olmert faces up to five years in prison. Eyal Rosovsky, a lawyer for the defense, described the team as disappointed and mooted the possibility of an appeal, according to the New York Times.

Olmert is currently awaiting the verdict of an appeal against a separate graft conviction. Last year, he was handed a six-year prison sentence by a Tel Aviv court for involvement in a major corruption scandal. The court found that during his term as mayor, he received US$140,000 from the Holyland Development Company in exchange for speeding up a residential development and helping to bypass construction regulations for areal estate project. 

occrp.org