Israeli Politician Gets 5 Years in Fund Theft : Corruption: Embezzlement by a leader of religious party strengthens calls for a cleanup of politics.

In the latest scandal in Israeli politics, a leader of a religious party was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison after admitting that he had stolen the equivalent of $120,000 in state funds given to the party’s schools.

Yair Levy, a former member of Parliament from the Shas party, had pleaded guilty to 141 counts of embezzlement, fraud and forgery in what prosecutors regard as the most serious criminal case ever brought against an Israeli politician.

Police said the stolen money totaled several times the admitted sum.

Levy’s wife, Geula, convicted with him, was sentenced to six months of community service so that she could remain at home with their seven children.

Although Levy expected a lighter sentence as the result of a plea bargain with prosecutors, Judge Aryeh Segelson denounced Levy for betraying the political and religious trust placed in him, then showing no repentance by refusing to return the money or even say where it had gone.

Levy had asserted initially that he was a victim of “ethnic persecution” because Shas draws most of its support from North African immigrants.

He said Thursday that the sentence is “grossly unfair.”

But Segelson, taking more than an hour to sum up the evidence against Levy before pronouncing sentence, said: “The gravity of Levy’s acts and his position as a public figure, as well as the fact that he did not return the funds, call for a harsh sentence as a deterrent.”

The Levy case, which has rocked the ultra-Orthodox community of haredim (literally, the fearful ones) is the latest in a series of scandals that are bringing calls from Israelis for a cleanup in the country’s politics.

Last week, former Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu charged that opponents were trying to force him out of the race for the leadership of the Likud Party with threats to show a videotape of him having sex with a married woman.

Earlier, the state comptroller accused Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s Labor Party, along with Shas, of violating laws on political fund-raising and, in effect, buying its way back to power in the parliamentary election last June.

The new Israeli ambassador to the United States is under investigation on charges of tax evasion, and his departure for Washington has been held up.

An investigation also is under way into what may be the biggest case yet--allegations that Arye Deri, the interior minister and leader of Shas, took bribes, misappropriated government and party funds and used the money to purchase apartments and establish Swiss bank accounts.

According to charges that Levy admitted, he forged signatures on checks intended to pay instructors in Shas’ religious education program.

Then he used the money to buy apartments and expensive jewelry and to build up bank accounts for his children.

Ron Milo, the former police minister and now a member of Parliament from the opposition Likud Party, suggested that investigators and state prosecutors would now increase their efforts to build the case against Deri.

Deri has promised to resign from the Rabin government once formally charged.