Margol sentenced to six months of community service

“I am so sorry for the situation I got into," popular singer Margalit Tsanani says before being sentenced.

By JOANNA PARASZCZUK
Tsanani 311 (photo credit: REUTERS/Yossi Zeliger/Israel Hayom)
Tsanani 311
(photo credit: REUTERS/Yossi Zeliger/Israel Hayom)
Popular singer and television personality Margalit Tsanani apologized in court on Monday, moments before being sentenced to six months of community service.
“I don’t have much to say,” the 63-year-old celebrity said.
“I am so sorry for the situation I got into, I hope the honorable judge will judge me very gently. I’ve nothing to say, I’m sorry.”
Tel Aviv District Court Judge Oded Mudrik sentenced Tsanani after she agreed to sign a plea bargain last month.
The singer pleaded guilty to extorting her talent manager, Assaf Atadegi, in return for which state prosecutors agreed to drop additional charges of conspiracy to commit a crime.
Before the sentence was pronounced, Tsanani’s defense team brought witnesses to testify in favor of the singer’s good character.
Among them was cultural affairs journalist Gal Uchovsky, who praised the singer for her decades’ long support of Israel’s gay and lesbian community and said she had no criminal past “apart from traffic offenses.”
Defense lawyer Gez also tried to persuade the judge to give Tsanani a lighter sentence on the grounds that her victim, Atadegi, had suffered no criminal damage.
However, passing sentence, Mudrik said the crime of extortion was a serious one, even though Atadegi had not been physically harmed.
Tsanani will begin her community service on January 9, 2012 in the in the Tsfira Bnei Akiva girls school.