State witness caught on contradictions in allegations of bribing former J'lem mayor Lupolianski, scale of alleged fraud.
By YONAH JEREMY BOBThe Holyland Tower in Jerusalem 370(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
The state witness in the Holyland case on Sunday and Monday was caught in new inconsistencies regarding overall allegations about having illegally increased the number of residential units by 20 percent and about paying bribes to former Jerusalem mayor Uri Lupolianski, according to News1 reports.Hillel Cherny’s attorney Giora Aderet, who has been cross-examining the state witness – known only as “S.D.” under a gag order – for over a month, brought evidence that the project never used the alleged permission to add an additional 20% in residential units, said the report on Monday’s hearing.While S.D. altered his testimony in response to Aderet’s cross-examination, the report noted that he was forced to admit that no complete and official approval had been given for the additional 20% in 2003, as he had originally claimed.At Sunday’s hearing, S.D. acknowledged that he had no concrete proof that he had given NIS 120,000 to Lupolianski’s charity Yad Sarah for his help with overcoming Holyland-related legal obstacles, said a News1 report.S.D. admitted this when told there were no traces in Cherny’s checking account of a check written for NIS 120,000.The report also said that when Aderet told S.D. that Cherny had been donating funds to Lupolianski’s charity Yad Sarah for years, even before the Holyland project, he caught the witness offguard.The Holyland trial revolves around one of the largest alleged bribery and fraud schemes in the country’s history and involves former prime minister Ehud Olmert, Lupolianski and 14 other defendants.
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