Rob Lattin is Jspace News' Foreign Affairs Correspondent. In addition to covering foreign affairs for Jspace, Rob is a blogger on Israeli and Middle Eastern foreign policy for the Foreign Policy Association, as well as a freelance writer. He can be reached by email at rob@jspacecorp.com. On Tuesday, for the first time in a while, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was able to take a deep sigh of relief. Olmert was cleared of major corruption charges in both the Rishon Tours affair and the Morris Talansky …More

Spanish authorities have agreed to extradite businessman Hussein Salem to Egypt to stand trial for squandering public funds. Salem, a close associate of ousted President Hosni Mubarak, is accused of making illegal profits off Egyptian gas sales to Israel, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday. The prosecution argues that East Mediterranean Gas, of which Salem is a major stakeholder, sold gas to Israel at less than market value and cost Egypt billions in lost revenue. On Salem’s arrest, …More

Prominent New Jersey rabbi Eliahu Ben Haim was sentenced to five years in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to laundering $1 million through religious charities he controlled. Ben Haim’s sentence is the most severe delivered so far in the state’s largest federal corruption sing. Ben Haim was one of 46 defendants arrested in 2009 as part of a federal corruption probe into international money laundering and political corruption. Like many of the accused, Ben Haim pled guilty last year. He used his …More

Israel is growing more corrupt, if the international Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for 2011 is to be believed. The survey, released Thursday, places Israel in 36th place out of 183 countries, six spots lower than last year. This ranking is Israel's lowest since Berlin-based Transparency International (TI) began publishing its annual reports in 1995. According to the organization's web page (http://transparency.org), "TI raises awareness and diminishes apathy and tolerance of corruption, and devises and …More