Former Deputy Interior Minister Faina Kirschenbaum began serving her ten years in prison

Former Deputy Interior Minister Faina Kirschenbaum began serving her ten years in prison this morning (Wednesday) for bribery, fraud and breach of trust, at Neve Tirza Prison in Ramla. In October, the Supreme Court rejected her request to delay the execution of the sentence pending a decision on the appeal she filed on the sentence, and ruled that the chances of appeal were low.
At the center of the affair is a criminal method used by the Yisrael Beiteinu party, in order to speculate in its governmental power and to receive funds for the needs of the party and the personal needs of its people. Kirschenbaum, who served as the party's secretary general, and the rest of the bribe recipients in the case, used to help various parties receive government budgets and donations, in exchange for percentages of those budgets and donations.
Between 2009 and the end of 2014, Kirschenbaum weakened the party's coalition funds' budget, public funds in the amount of NIS 1.2 billion, the allocation of which was devoted to the consideration of Yisrael Beiteinu. According to the verdict in the case, at that time Kirschenbaum took bribes in the amount of two million shekels for herself and her party.
She was convicted of 15 counts of bribery, four of bribery and three counts of fraud and breach of trust. In addition to the actual prison sentences imposed on her, she was sentenced to 12 months probation and a fine of NIS 900,000. The verdict states that "the defendant acted to circumvent the rules of proper administration, and to do with the public funds entrusted to her maturity ... the booty she extracted from the public coffers generously distributed with her friends with her family and with herself."
Among the bribe recipients is Rami Cohen, former director general of the Ministry of Agriculture and an associate of the Minister of Finance and party chairman Avigdor Lieberman. He was convicted of four counts of bribery (including bribery, brokering a bribe and attempting to broker a bribe), receiving anything fraudulently under aggravated circumstances, forgery under aggravated circumstances and other offenses - and sentenced to 30 months in prison.