Israeli multimillionaire rabbi pleads guilty to bribery

A lawyer for an Israeli celebrity rabbi with a following in the United States says his client has pleaded guilty to bribing a senior police official and could face a year in prison.

Eyal Rozovsky tells Army Radio that Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto is "paying a price for something not easy that he did."

He says Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel has agreed to submit testimony on Pinto's character to seek leniency in his sentencing.

Pinto pleaded guilty in an Israeli court Tuesday as part of a plea bargain he reached last year.

He admitted to offering bribes in 2012 to receive classified information on a police investigation into one of his charitable organizations.

The multimillionaire rabbi has a celebrity following in Israel, New York, and elsewhere.