Nazareth Illit mayor convicted of bribery

A Haifa court found the mayor of Nazareth Illit guilty of bribery on Thursday for trying to force a member of the northern town’s city council to resign.

Shimon Gapso and his former deputy mayor Adi Barko were found guilty by the Haifa District Court of coercing the councilman to step down after the 2008 elections or else his wife would lose her job with the city.

The councilman refused Gapso and Barko’s threats and the woman was fired. Judge Oded Gershon ruled that making continued employment dependent on the councilman’s resignation constituted a form of bribery.

“When a soldier goes out to battle, he knows that he might come back in a coffin,” Gapso said following the court’s ruling. “I will study the verdict and we will see what we decide concerning an appeal to the High Court. This is the court’s decision and I respect it. I was elected with a democratic decision and if the court decides at the end of the day that I need to be sent home, that is what I will do. If the court decides that I can go back to serving the public then I will also do that.”

Gapso’s political career has been dogged by suspicions of bribery and corruption. He was removed from office by court order in March 2014 after being reelected in September 2013, but was arrested just a month after the elections on accusations of accepting a bribe, breach of trust, money laundering, violation of privacy and illegally accessing a computer.

At the time police alleged that Gapso took a bribe from a local businessman to keep a banquet hall open even though it did not have the proper permits, posted people’s personal information in public, and accessed the computers of other city officials to learn personal details about them.

The troubled mayor had already been removed from office once before by the High Court of Justice, a month before his reelection in 2013, due to ongoing corruption investigations.