JERUSALEM — Israel’s attorney general, Menachem Mazuz, announced Wednesday that he was preparing to charge the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, with crimes including fraud and breach of trust over accusations of double-billing for plane tickets.
Mr. Mazuz will grant Mr. Olmert a judicial hearing before making a final decision on an indictment, a Justice Ministry statement released Wednesday said.
Mr. Olmert, who became prime minister in 2006, has been dogged by various corruption investigations throughout his term, but he has denied wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crime.
The announcement on Wednesday involved suspicions that Mr. Olmert fraudulently billed multiple entities, including charitable organizations and the state, for the same flights when he traveled abroad from 2002 to 2006 as mayor of Jerusalem, trade minister and deputy prime minister.
Mr. Olmert is suspected of having used the extra money for dozens of personal and family trips and for upgrades. The Justice Ministry said Mr. Olmert’s travel agency sent fictitious invoices, sometimes charging the entities more than the price of the flight and for flight routes different from those taken.
As a result Mr. Olmert amassed about $85,000 in a private account that was handled by the travel agency, the Justice Ministry said.
Lawyers representing Mr. Olmert said they found Mr. Mazuz’s announcement “puzzling and even unreasonable.”
“The prime minister was amazed to learn of details and charges which were never brought up in any of his interrogations,” they said. “Contrary to the attorney general’s announcement, Olmert was never confronted with any evidence suggesting he was aware of the alleged acts.”
Mr. Olmert formally resigned as prime minister in September under the weight of the investigations. But his replacement as the leader of the Kadima Party, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, was unable to form a new government coalition, leaving Mr. Olmert in place as a caretaker prime minister pending elections scheduled for Feb. 10.
Although he is already effectively a lame duck, Wednesday’s announcement was likely to chip away at Mr. Olmert’s legitimacy even more.
The main cause of Mr. Olmert’s downfall was another case involving money — much of it cash stuffed into envelopes — he is suspected of having received over more than a decade from Morris Talansky, a Long Island businessman. Mr. Talansky’s testimony in a Jerusalem court in May was devastating for Mr. Olmert, who was already unpopular in Israel.
It was in the course of the Talansky inquiry that investigators came across evidence of the suspected double-billing.
In September, the Israeli police recommended indicting Mr. Olmert in both cases, on charges including bribe-taking, fraud and breach of trust, but the attorney general has the final say.
Mr. Talansky’s American lawyer, Bradley Simon, has advised his client not to come back to Israel to testify again, lest he incriminate himself in the United States, where he is under investigation.
Mr. Talansky has denied that there was ever any quid pro quo between himself and Mr. Olmert, or that he was involved in bribery.
The Israeli Justice Ministry said Wednesday that the attorney general had not yet made a decision regarding the Talansky allegations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/world/middleeast/27mideast.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print
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