Silvio Berlusconi To Be Tried By His Own Laws
// Italy’s Richest Man Accused of Bribery
A Milan court has opened a new criminal case against former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Mr. Berlusconi, who has ample experience in fighting legal battles, will appear in court with his lawyer David Mills to answer corruption charges. The prosecution’s case includes a new revelation that prosecutors believe to be incontrovertible evidence of Mr. Berlusconi’s guilt: Mr. Berlusconi once paid Mr. Mills $600,000 to present false evidence at a trial. However, Italy’s most powerful man may come out unscathed thanks to a law that was adopted during his tenure as prime minister.
A Trial unlike Any Other
Niccolo Ghedini, a lawyer of Mr. Berlusconi’s, said on Monday that the move to formally charge Silvio Berlusconi and David Mills with corruption was made by Milan judge Fabio Paparella. According to Mr. Ghedini, the beginning of the trial is set for March 13, 2007. After hearing opening arguments, Judge Paparella decided that the evidence assembled by the prosecution is sufficient to open a new case charging Mr. Berlusconi with paying a massive bribe to his British lawyer in return for presenting false evidence and obscuring facts during infamous trials in the late 1990s investigating financial misdeeds within Fininvest, a concern belonging to Mr. Berlusconi.
The battle between Mr. Berlusconi and the Italian courts has been going on since the 1990s and has long been an integral part of Italian politics. However, it has been given an extra shadow of intrigue by the fact that this is the first criminal case opened against the ex-prime minister since his center-right “House of Freedoms” faction was defeated in a close election in April of this year, forcing the richest and most powerful man in Italy to yield his seat to his arch-rival Romano Prodi, the leader of the center-left party “Union.” Several of the prior cases against Mr. Berlusconi ended in convictions, but Mr. Berlusconi had little trouble emerging the victor nonetheless: every conviction was overturned by judges in a higher court. This time, however, the circumstances are different. Italy is now governed by a center-left government that has promised to rid the country of the odious political legacy of Silvio Berlusconi, and that will undoubtedly mean that the unfolding of this case will look nothing like the previous cases against Mr. Berlusconi. The main question that is now roiling Italy is whether it is possible that the master of Italy will finally end up behind bars, or whether this latest case will end just like all the others.
The Matter of the $600,000
The story of the $600,000 that was allegedly given by the former Italian prime minister to his British lawyer in payment for “silence and the necessary displays,” has been hotly discussed by the Italian and British media since last July, when the Milan prosecutor’s office released a statement concerning the beginning of an investigation into the matter. Those in Britain are paying additional interest to Mr. Berlusconi’s lawyer, David Mills, who is the estranged husband of British Culture Minister Tessa Jowell.
Mr. Mills was called as a witness in two trials against Silvio Berlusconi in 1997 and 1998. The first case concerned the matter of bribes paid by Fininvest to Italian tax police, and the second alleged that the company had cooked its books and illegally financed the Socialist Party, whose leader was a friend of Mr. Berlusconi’s named Bettino Craxi (Mr. Craxi died in self-imposed exile abroad, where he was hiding from the Italian police after being sentenced to prison for financial crimes). According to the Milan prosecutor’s office, Mr. Mills received the money from Mr. Berlusconi in exchange for withholding information from the court.
Representatives of the prosecution maintain that they have long known how David Mills received the money. The part of middleman between the lawyer and his client was played by Carlo Bernasconi, a top manager at Fininvest. Unfortunately for the prosecution, Mr. Bernasconi has since died.
Mr. Mills was more than just a lawyer for Fininvest’s owner: he is well-known as the brains behind the system of shadowy offshore daughter companies with which Fininvest surrounded itself in the 1990s and which Mr. Berlusconi’s company allegedly used for its illegal financial dealings. Investigators believe that it was through similar schemes that Silvio Berlusconi’s empire paid bribes to as many government officials as it could reach. In particular, this scheme was used by another lawyer and friend of Mr. Berlusconi, Cesare Previti, in 1991 to purchase influence over prosecutor Renato Squillante. Unlike his patron, Mr. Previti is being made to pay for his crime with an 11-year prison sentence handed down in 2003.
As the Italian press has pointed out, Silvio Berlusconi was always very interested in making sure that Fininvest’s illegal funds stayed below the horizon of law enforcement officials. According to some reports, Mr. Berlusconi personally discussed with David Mills the best way to distract the attention of the Italian courts from the shadowy underbelly of Fininvest. When the name Aliberian was mentioned as the name of one of Fininvest’s shadowy offshore companies during a trial in 1998, Silvio Berlusconi, who had vigorously denied the existence of such a company, expressed his indignation by demanding, “would I, with my sense of aesthetics, really create a company with an ugly-sounding name like that?” Mr. Berlusconi is continuing to steadfastly deny that he is even personally acquainted with Mr. Mills, much less guilty of giving him $600,000.
David Mills is likewise denying his acquaintance with Mr. Berlusconi. At first he denied receiving $600,000 from Fininvest, but he later reluctantly changed his mind and claimed that he had received an honorarium “for consulting services.”
The Eternal Accused
The case is scheduled to begin in Milan on March 13 of next year. In the opinion of observers, the first trial verdict is likely to be returned by the beginning of the summer. Meanwhile, however, few people in Italy believe that Silvio Berlusconi will really be brought to justice. As the newspaper Corriere della seira wrote, “it is more likely that a mountain will give birth to a mouse.” And here is why: in the very last week of his tenure as prime minister, Mr. Berlusconi signed the so-called “Ex-Cirielli” law, which drastically shortens the statute of limitations on crimes with which the ex-prime minister can be charged in connection with the new case being leveled against him. In order to again gain immunity from prosecution, Mr. Berlusconi only has to hold out until 2008. Given that a case must go through three court hearings, including the appellate court, before a final verdict can be delivered, it will not be too difficult to obstruct the process with numerous delays and “technical pauses.”
However, the newspaper La Repubblica has pointed out that this case is but an offshoot of another investigation that the Milan prosecutor’s office is carrying out in regard to the television company Mediasette, which is part of Fininvest. Prosecutors have accused Mr. Berlusconi’s company of making illegal deals involving the purchase and selling rights for American television and film productions. The deals were allegedly processed through the offshore firms, in violation of Italian law. In response, Silvio Berlusconi maintains that he is being persecuted for political reasons. As such, even if the new proceedings against the “master of Italy” come to naught, his battle with the law will hardly end there.
Elena Pushkarskaya (Rome)
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 01, 2006
|
