After Olmert Convicted, Land Developers At Loss How To Do Job

Developers have yet to arrive at a process for gaining governmental approval for their projects that does not involve the illicit provision of money or favors.

Jerusalem, December 28 – Building developers across Israel expressed bewilderment and frustration at the upheld bribery conviction of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert today, saying that if it is not acceptable to bribe public officials to get approval for real estate projects, there appears to be no way for them to move any plans beyond the conceptual stages.

Olmert, now 70, was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for accepting bribes when he was mayor of Jerusalem and Minister of Industry and Trade, in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. The emerging scandal forced him to resign as prime minister in 2008, throwing Israeli politics into turmoil, but more importantly for some, undermining the very foundation of the entire field of real estate development in Israel. The High Court’s upholding of a prison sentence on appeal compounded the perplexity of those developers, who have yet to arrive at a process for gaining governmental approval for their projects that does not involve the illicit provision of money or favors.

“This ruling leaves us floundering,” admitted developer I. M. Agannov, who used bribery and extortion to gain approval for a shopping complex in Holon eight years ago. “If it’s not OK to cut through red tape with a few well-placed payments, what am I supposed to do? Wait for a project to be judged on its merits? What freier operates like that?” he wondered, using a Yiddish term roughly equivalent to “sucker” or “easy mark.”

“I might have to resort to blackmail,” added E. U. Mimm, who has a proposal for a residential development in Natanya, but will be unable to secure zoning, infrastructure, and planning approval if he goes only through the formal channels. “The judges didn’t say anything about blackmail, did they? I have plenty of dirt on the head of the zoning commission. Is that still an acceptable route? I need to know before I send her that compromising video clip with a list of my terms.”

Developers and contractors are not the only people voicing apprehension over the ruling’s implications. “The only way to get the superintendent to do anything around here is to slide a hundred-shekel bill under his door with a note,” lamented Ani Bar-Num of the Holyland Towers residence in Jerusalem. “If that’s outlawed, how is anybody going to maintain their homes? This makes no sense. There was a system in place, and now the courts are undermining everything we’ve ever known about getting people to do anything around here.”