Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister who was forced from office amid allegations of corruption, was sentenced Monday to eight months in jail for fraud and breach of trust in a case involving an American businessman. The Jerusalem District Court agreed to postpone the start of the prison sentence for 45 days to allow time for an appeal on behalf of Olmert, who is already contesting a six-year sentence for taking bribes in a different case involving the construction of a housing complex in Jerusalem.Olmert, who was convicted in the breach of trust case in March, also received an eight-month suspended sentence on Monday and was fined 100,000 shekels, or about $26,000.Uri Korb, the state prosecutor in the case, said the court had clearly determined that Olmert’s conduct was tainted by “a black flag of immorality and corruption.” The prosecution had asked for a sentence of more than a year, but the court said it had taken into consideration Olmert’s contributions to the state and to Israeli society.Olmert, who has been convicted on corruption charges three times since 2012, was “disappointed” with the sentence, according to one of his lawyers, Eyal Rosovsky, who said his client intended to appeal the decision in the Supreme Court.The US businessman involved in the case, Morris Talansky, provided testimony in a Jerusalem court in 2008 that astonished the Israeli public.Talansky was said to have provided Olmert with hundreds of thousands of dollars, much of it in cash stuffed into envelopes. State prosecutors have said the money transfers began when Olmert ran for mayor of Jerusalem in the early 1990s and continued until late 2005, when he was minister of industry and trade.Olmert became prime minister in early 2006, and the highly publicized investigations into his conduct dogged his three-year tenure in that office.The Talansky case has hinged on whether the money, earmarked for political contributions, was used by Olmert for private purposes. Olmert was acquitted on that count in July 2012, when the court ruled that the evidence did not prove beyond doubt that Olmert had acted with criminal intent.But a retrial was ordered after Shula Zaken, Olmert’s longtime aide and confidante, testified against him. Zaken provided the police with her diaries and with tapes she had made of incriminating conversations with Olmert indicating that he had used money from the Talansky fund to supplement Zaken’s salary.- New York Times News Service..