By DAN IZENBERG
Haifa District Court judge Ilan Shiff on Wednesday sentenced the former mayor of Hadera, Yisrael Sadan, to eight months in jail and seven months of a suspended sentence for bribing three municipal representatives to join his coalition.
Shiff also handed down jail sentences to four other council members who were involved in the affairs.
Sadan served as commander of the Border Police and before that was chief of police of the Haifa subdistrict of the Northern Police District.
The other individuals sentenced in the affair were Avraham Baldav, Aryeh Gamliel, Mordechai Angel and Yoel Yehoshua.
"All of the defendants were guilty of corruption and cheated in their public offices," wrote Shiff. "The official elected by the public is the trustee of the public. He is supposed to serve the public and work on its behalf and for its good. His considerations are supposed to be objective, pure and legal and he must not act from corrupt interest of receiving personal benefits. Woe unto the society whose elected officials and leaders make decisions affecting the entire public when what they are thinking about is their own material well-being."
Sadan was convicted of offering Angel a half-time job at NIS 10,000 a month guaranteed for five years and NIS 150,000 to pay off his party's debts in return for joining the governing coalition.
He promised Yehoshua that he would arrange for his wife to get a job in a municipal not-for-profit organization with a "positive" rise in salary. He also promised that the city would rent a store owned by Yehoshua's mother for four years.
Sadan also offered a bribe to another member of the municipal council who was in fact a police agent.
The mayor promised to give him NIS 150,000 and buy goods from his son's businesses.
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