Olmert heard on recording telling former aide not to testify
Shula Zaken takes stand against ex-PM in retrial of Talansky affair; prosecutors seek to prove he obstructed justice, made illegal use of funds
Former prime minister Ehud Olmert told top aide Shula Zaken that she should not testify in a case against him because she would wither under prosecution pressure, and offered her large sums of money, a Jerusalem court heard Monday as Zaken took the stand against her former boss.
The Jerusalem District Court heard testimony from Zaken, including recordings of conversations between Olmert and Zaken, in what has become known at the Talansky affair, named for American businessman and fundraiser Morris Talansky, a former close associate of Olmert.
Prosecutors are trying to use the recordings, supplied by Zaken as part of a plea bargain, to prove that Olmert took funds for illegal use and was guilty of witness tampering.
He was acquitted in the case in 2012, though later found guilty of other unrelated graft charges for which he has been sentenced to jail.
At the heart of the matter are large sums of cash Olmert gave Zaken and whether the money was intended to pay for her services as his bureau chief and cover her legal expenses, or as a bribe.
In one recording made while Olmert was giving Zaken money, Olmert can be heard telling her that there is $45,000 in the envelopes and “this week, God willing, I will get 125 (thousand) more. I will transfer some of it in cash, I hope, not this week but the next, and you can decide what you want to give him.”
Olmert contends that the funds in question were not meant to bribe Zaken to refrain from testifying, but to help her pay her legal bills, which is not against the law and which he’s already acknowledged.
Olmert claims that Zaken begged him to help her pay for her lawyers and that he had already given her the $45,000, but she brought them to the meeting in order to make an incriminating recording.
In another potentially damning recording, Olmert can clearly be heard advising Zaken that as long as she did not take the stand, her ledgers of money transfers could not be submitted as evidence in the case against him.
Olmert further explained that without the ledgers, the prosecution could not convict her.
“What’s the problem now? You didn’t take the stand, [the prosecutor] could jump and dance in the air, he couldn’t convict or present this — these ledgers,” he said. “This is everything, this paper, if you don’t reveal them, they can’t submit the paper [as evidence], they can’t question the paper, they cannot determine the facts from the paper.”
While the prosecution argues that by advising Zaken not to testify, Olmert was guilty of obstruction of justice, Olmert’s position is that he was simply talking to her as a friend and describing the legal reality that she could harm her own interests after she’d asked him why she should not take the stand, which he argues would not break any laws.
The prosecution also claims that the new material describes the system by which donor money was transferred to Olmert, often for personal use, which could open the door for Olmert to be convicted of other graft charges on which he was previously acquitted.
On Thursday, Zaken is set to face defense lawyers on cross-examination.
The court also ordered Olmert’s defense team to return state evidence mistakenly delivered to it.
Olmert’s lawyers contended last Friday that there was no basis for the prosecution to demand the return of a CD containing some 3,000 emails.
This is the second time state prosecutors have mistakenly sent Olmert’s team evidence and requested its return, according to the defense.
The Supreme Court ordered the retrial on the Talansky and Rishon Tours affairs in August, saying it would allow new testimony from Zaken who provided the information last spring as part of a plea bargain. Zaken is serving out an 11-month sentence handed down to her in May.
Olmert was accused of paying for family vacations by double billing Jewish organizations through the Rishon Tours travel agency, accepting envelopes full of cash from Talansky, and granting personal favors to attorney Uri Messer when he served as trade minister in the Investment Center case.
The charges were filed after he became prime minister in 2006, but covered his time as mayor of Jerusalem and later as a government minister. He officially resigned as prime minister in September 2008 after police investigators recommended that he be indicted.
In May, Olmert was sentenced to six years in prison, a two-year suspended term, and a fine of NIS 1 million ($289,000) for accepting bribes in a separate graft case known as the “Holyland affair,” revolving around a large Jerusalem residential development, and ordered to report to prison on September 1, but the prison date was suspended pending his appeal.
The Holyland affair is considered one of the worst corruption scandals in the country’s history. At the center of the case was the Holyland housing development, a hulking hilltop project that Jerusalem residents long suspected was tainted by corruption.
The case broke in 2010 after Shmuel Dachner, a businessman who was involved in the project, turned state’s witness. Dachner died from an illness in 2013, in the midst of the trial and before Olmert’s attorneys had completed their cross-examination of him.
JTA contributed to this report.
