TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Former Israeli finance minister Avraham Hirchson, an ally of former premier Ehud Olmert, was jailed for five years and five months on Wednesday for offences including theft and fraud.
A court spokeswoman said Hirchson was also fined 450,000 shekels (69,297 pounds). On June 8, he was found guilty of stealing over half a million dollars from the trade union he led before becoming a minister in the coalition formed by Olmert in 2006.
Olmert, then leader of the centrist Kadima party, was forced to resign last year amid a police investigation into alleged corruption. The former premier denies all wrongdoing. Prosecutors said in April they were considering laying charges.
Earlier on Wednesday, Israel's highest appeals court sentenced another former cabinetminister to four years in prison for corruption, more than doubling the sentence Shlomo Benizri originally received for taking bribes.
The judges in that case said they extended Benizri's sentence to set an example and fight back against a tide of corruption in Israeli public life.
"There is a phenomenon of increasing corruption in Israeli society, to which the institutions of power have not been immune," the appeals judges wrote in a verdict, increasing the former welfare and health minister's sentence from 18 months.
"To address this scourge and act as a deterrent ... the time has come for action and to exact a higher price."
Benizri, a member of the Jewish ultra-Orthodox Shas party, was a minister from 2000 to 2003 in successive left- and right-led coalition governments.
(Writing by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
