Former Jerusalem mayor arrested in major bribery scandal

Jerusalem - A luxurious Jerusalem housing project at the center of a major bribery scandal in Israel was "only the start" of revelations into alleged crimes by Jerusalem's mayor, a city councilor told Israel Army Radio Thursday.

Meir Turgeman made the remarks a day after former Jerusalem mayor Uri Lupolianski was arrested on suspicion of accepting over 800,000 dollars in bribes to ensure that the housing project plan was approved. He also faces allegations of money laundering.

Other building developments in the city are expected to come under investigation.

Police suspect that, between 1999 and 2008, the Holyland Development Company and associated land developers paid tens of millions of dollars in bribes to senior decisionmakers in the Jerusalem municipality, members of its planning and construction committee, and officials in the Israel Land Administration.

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

The affair has shocked Israelis and has been termed the biggest corruption scandal 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.

Lupolianski was Jerusalem's deputy mayor and chairman of the municipality's planning and construction committee between 1993 and 2003, when the Holyland plan was approved. He served as a member of the National Building and Planning Committee when he was mayor from 2003 to 2008.

Police suspect that by 1999 he had received 1.5 million shekels (around 400,000 dollars) in bribes, which he transferred in the form of a donation to the Yad Sarah charity for disabled elderly people, which he founded in 1976.

A second alleged transfer of funds took place between 2006 and 2008.

In return, Lupolianski is suspected of pushing for an enlarged version of the project and resisting calls to lower the height of the project's residential towers by two stories.

He also allegedly helped ensure that almost 1,000 objections to the project were overruled.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/318831,former-jerusalem-mayor-arrested-in-major-bribery-scandal.html.