Israel's Jerusalem District Court judges sentenced former prime minister Ehud Olmert to pay a 65,000-shekel (15,000 U.S. dollars) fine over his July conviction on charges of breach of public trust and spared him from serving community service due to his offences.

The judges decided not to sentence Olmert to community service as the prosecution requested. A sentence of more than three months of community service would block Olmert's possible return to politics, as the Basic Knesset (parliament) law regulates.

The panel of judges wrote in its 27-pages decision that there was a clear conflict of interests between Olmert and attorney Uri Messer, whose interests he promoted as a politician.

The judges said breach of trust is a grave offense, and that the law is made to protect the proper conduct of democracy. However, the judges said that Olmert's fall from the top rank of prime minister to a private person facing criminal charges should evoke some leniency in the sentencing.

Olmert, who served as Israel's prime minister between 2006 and 2008, was convicted in July on breaching public trust in what was dubbed the Investment Center Affair.

He was convicted of improprieties during his tenure as Industry, Trade and Labor Minister between 2003 and 2005. when he secured grants and tax breaks for Messer, his long-time colleague and friend.

In two other charges, which led to Olmert's 2008 resignation, the court had acquitted him.

In the Rishon Tours affair, he was accused of pocketing 92,164 U.S. dollars by double and triple billing reimbursement from public organizations and the state for trips held between 2002 and 2006.

In the Talansky affair, he was charged with illegally receiving hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars handed to him in sealed envelopes by U.S. Jewish businessman Moris Talansky.

Olmert is also pending verdict on a different case of bribe in the Holyland affair, what some refer to as one of the biggest alleged bribe scandals in the country's history.

According to the charges, Olmert expedited construction proceedings, smoothed planning objections and dispatched tax breaks to advance the interests of a real-estate group constructing a controversial upscale residential apartment project in Jerusalem when he was mayor between 1993 and 2003.