Jailed former tourism minister Stas Misezhnikov gets parole

Jerusalem, 13 August, 2018 (TPS) -- Former Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov is set to be released from jail in September having served just 10 months of a 15 month sentence after the Israel Prisons Service Parole Board agreed Monday to cut his sentence by a third for good behavior. Misezhnikov was jailed in December last year after agreeing to a plea bargain with regard to charges of fraud and breach of public trust. The former Yisrael Beiteinu minister transferred NIS 2 million from his ministry to a festival for university students in Eilat but conditioned the tourism ministry’s support on the hiring of a woman, Julia Roth, with whom he had what the court called a “close relationship” to be an executive producer, earning her some NIS 100,000. Charges of using parliamentary aides to procure cocaine for him were dropped as part of the plea bargain.