Former finance minister Hirschson freed from jail

Former finance minister Avraham Hirschson was released from Hermon Prison in the North on Wednesday after having served three-and-a-half years of a five-and-a-half year sentence on embezzlement charges.
Hirschson, who served as finance minister under Ehud Olmert, was convicted in 2009 by the Tel Aviv District Court of embezzling millions of shekels from the Histadrut Labor Federation while he served as its chairman in the late 1990s.
He was also convicted of theft, fraud, breach of trust of a corporation, money laundering and other crimes.
A Parole Board decided last month to commute Hirschson\’s sentence due to good behavior.
Upon his release, Hirschson, who was met by his son, said that he gives "thanks to the Creator of the World every day for getting me out healthy so that I may hug my family."
On an appeal to the Supreme Court in 2011, which Hirschson lost, the court reportedly summarized his conduct stating that "the cash envelopes raised a black flag of illegality."
Hirschson was convicted of having a systematic plan for taking cash from the Histadrut in envelopes on a regular basis without reporting the cash he was taking.
The former finance minister had argued that the sentence he received was not proportionate to sentences given to other defendants in the affair.
He had tried to characterize the funds he took as being funds due to him and limiting his wrongdoing to taking funds in excess of what he was permitted to take from the Histadrut as a Knesset member and to his failure to report taking the funds.
Neither the lower court nor the Supreme Court accepted his explanation, finding his method of taking the funds as evidence that he was stealing from the Histadrut and as disproving Hirshcson\’s alibi.
The Supreme Court said that his explanation was in contradiction not only with financial realities, but also with reasonable common sense.
Hirschson was one of a series of unrelated major criminal cases which enveloped many top officials in Kadima over a short-time period, also including Tzahi Hanegbi and Ehud Olmert.