Supreme Court fears lawyer convicted of defrauding holocaust survivors will try to flee country.
By JPOST.COM STAFFyisrael perry courty 248 88(photo credit: Channel 10)
The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Yisrael Perry, an attorney convicted of defrauding Holocaust survivors of almost NIS 1 billion, would start to serve his punishment later on Tuesday.
The judges decided to overrule the court's decision from February 5, which delayed the verdict's implementation by thirty days, after reading confidential intelligence material provided by the police that indicated there was a high probability that the lawyer would flee the country.
On Monday afternoon, Perry was picked up by officers of the National Fraud Squad in Tel Aviv after the police unit received advance intelligence indicating that he planned to leave Israel.
Earlier in February, the Supreme Court rejected Perry's appeal of his sentence of 12 years in prison but reduced the jail time to 10 years.
In February 2008, after six years in courts, Perry was convicted of theft, fraud, obstruction of justice and withholding vital information from his clients in order to deprive them of their money.
The attorney was sentenced to 10 years in jail, in addition to 5 and a half years of suspended sentence after he was found guilty of stealing 320 million German marks (around NIS 900m.) from tens of thousands of clients of the Organization for the Realization of the Social Security Treaty, a company established and controlled exclusively by Perry.
The organization's declared mission was to assist Israelis in receiving compensation from Germany in the form of social security pensions.
A NIS 22m fine was also imposed on the multimillionaire attorney.
Rebecca Anna Stoil contributed to this report.
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