Not Olmert's First Time (But Last?)

Ehud Olmert was once investigated under similar suspicions to his most recent one almost two decades ago.

As Haaretz recounts,

in November 1988, Olmert's wife, Aliza, and their daughter Michal flew to New York to attend an art exhibit featuring one of Mrs. Olmert's works. The cost of the plane ticket was $4,078 , and it was purchased through Rishon Tours. Investigators probed whether the ticket was paid for with cash that was donated to the Likud election campaign in 1988, the year Olmert served as the party's treasurer.

Police discovered that [Shula] Zaken acted on Olmert's behalf in his dealings with the travel agency, handling all matters related to private trips taken by Olmert and his family. In June 1991, police asked Zaken why she deals with Rishon Tours.

...She said that whenever Olmert or his family travel privately, she pays for it with a personal check from Olmert. Though she recalled Aliza Olmert taking a trip to New York with her daughter, "I don't know of any payment in cash and [if there was such a thing] it was certainly not done by me." At the conclusion of the questioning, Zaken said she believed payment for the trip at the expense of Likud coffers was the result of an error by the travel agency.

During that period, police also questioned Jeni Wergen, an assistant to the chief executive officer of Rishon Tours, as well as Emanuel Baumelshpiner, the agent who handled most of Olmert's trips.

"Usually, I would ask Shula who paid for this trip and that trip and who I should send the invoice to," Baumelshpiner told police then.

Olmert, who was then mayor of Jerusalem, was questioned on the matter in his office by Zakaria Banai, the police official who was then head of the national fraud unit. When Olmert was asked if the Likud financed his wife's and daughter's trip to New York, he replied: "I'm amazed by the question. I've never handled the technical aspects of paying for my trips. The one who always does that is my assistant, Shula Zaken. I've never asked that Likud funds be used to pay for my private trips or for trips taken by my family."

"It could very well be that the sum that was paid for other trips was erroneously attributed to my wife's and daughter's trip," Olmert said. "It boggles the mind" how a private family trip could have been financed by the Likud, Olmert said.

The investigation, unlike the fictitious receipts probe, was closed on the orders of then attorney general Michael Ben Yair, who ruled that the case "does not contain enough evidence and thus it is decided not to issue an indictment."

And what does his press pal, Nahum Barnea, think?

Ehud Olmert is a has-been. His career is finished. His fellow politicians know it, the foreign leaders he will be meeting in Paris Sunday know it, and the attorneys and police officers who manage his investigations know it.

The only one who refuses to know it is Ehud Olmert. By doing so, he is only making his suffering worse. The question of which incriminating evidence against him has accumulated, if at all, is still open – but he must realize that the damage to his public stature is irreversible. He must end his term as prime minister.