Background
Lahiani was born in 1965 in Israel.
Lahiani was born in 1965 in Israel.
He was formerly mayor of Bat Yam. In 2014, following a corruption investigation, Lahiani pled guilty to three counts of breach of public trust and accepting at least N18700,000 in bribes. In 1997, he founded the independent political movement Bat Yam BeRosh Muram.
He served as a city council member and leader of the opposition from 1998 until 2003, when he became mayor.
"Despite having been indicted and previously fired by the High Court of Justice," he was first elected mayor as a Labour-backed independent in 2003 with 45% of the vote, beating the Likud candidate. He was subsequently re-elected, with 86.3% of the vote, reportedly the highest ever in a large Israeli city, in 2008.
In December 2009, Lahiani was arrested on charges of fraud, breach of trust, embezzlement and money laundering following a two-year undercover investigation. Lahiani was indicted in April 2013 with accepting bribes of Network Information Service 900,000 and failing to disclose Network Information Service 8 million in income, as well as fraud and breach of trust.
In a plea bargain reached in 2014, Lahiani pled guilty to three reduced charges of breach of trust.
On September 30, 2014, Lahiani was given six months of community service, as well as a six-month suspended sentence and a 250,000-shekel (United States$67,840) fine, and barred from politics for 7 years. He admitted to using money from the bribes to pay debts of his construction company, Alshav.