This week, Interior Minister Gideon Sa'ar decided to cancel the fine imposed by the Interior Ministry in the amount of half a million shekels in 2005 on Zuriel Crispel, who then served as mayor of Elad, and reduce it to only 55,000 shekels, after accepting Crispel's claims that all of his decisions were made in the city's favor and due to a hostile council that acted against him.
In response to the decision, Crispal said this morning that he was happy that the last stain his opponents tried to attach to him in the previous term, regarding the personal fine imposed on him, had ended on the best side. "From today, all that will remain for everyone is the award I received from the Ministry of the Interior for proper management and excellence in the management of the city.".
The personal charge that the Ministry of the Interior imposed on Crispel began with difficult struggles waged against him by the opposition, in the early days of Crispel's establishment of the city of Elad, while submitting dozens of petitions to the courts, in an attempt to paralyze the work of the municipality.
As part of these struggles, which included, among other things, an appeal to the High Court of Justice to order a personal charge against Crispal for the millions of shekels he invested from the council's funds in building the city's schools, in addition to the funds allocated by the Ministry of Education for the construction of the schools. In addition, his political opponents demanded that he be required to pay out of his own pocket the cost of employing his personal assistant as director of the city's education department, even though this deal did not include any additional salary for the assistant's additional work, claiming that this was done without a tender as required, due to the paralysis of the council.
In his response to the High Court, Crispel claimed at the time that he stood behind his decisions and that he was proud of his actions, both in the development of the schools and in the employment of his assistant as director of the education department, as this saved the council at the time hundreds of thousands of shekels in senior salaries that were saved from the council's coffers, since the personal assistant did not receive a bonus for his additional work.
In another inspection conducted by the Audit Division at the council offices, it was decided not to charge Crispel for the financial irregularities that occurred in the schools, but on the other hand, the committee decided to charge Crispel to pay the council's coffers the costs of the assistant's salary for the period in which he also served as director of the education department.
This decision, adopted by then-Interior Minister Ofir Pines, and without any hearing as requested, left quite a few doubts and raised eyebrows, as a decision on the matter was supposed to and should have been made by the committee that was established at the time and headed by the President of the Jerusalem District Court, the late Judge Zeiler, and for some reason did not reach his desk.
Crispel's repeated requests to all the interior ministers of their generations to hold a proper hearing were not answered, and even the State Comptroller in his 2009 report stated this negatively and wrote that Crispel was subjected to continuous legal torture.
This week, current Interior Minister Gideon Sa'ar decided to put an end to the ongoing saga, and after consulting with the professional elements in the ministry, he accepted Crispal's renewed appeal to him, and ordered a reduction of 90% from the total amount imposed on him, setting it at only about 55,000 shekels.
In response to the decision, Crispel says that a public figure is required by virtue of his position to make difficult decisions that sometimes come at a personal cost, but he would still do so today for the benefit of the city and its residents. "In the end, the municipality did not pay an extra shekel to my assistant who held two positions, thereby saving money for the municipality.".
Upon receiving the decision, Deputy Mayor Zuriel Crispel approached the incumbent Mayor Israel Porush and asked him to invest the fee money in projects for the youth of Elad that were close to his heart.
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