[A-List] Italy: Berlusconi loses battle

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Berlusconi's lawyer convicted of bribery
By Peter Popham in Rome
The Independent
01 May 2003

Silvio Berlusconi's carefully laid plans to escape the judgment of Milan
were in ruins yesterday after the Italian Prime Minister's friend, lawyer
and political colleague Cesare Previti was sentenced to 11 years'
imprisonment for bribing judges.

The culmination of a trial that lasted nearly three years, dogged at every
step by the frantic attempts of Mr Berlusconi and Previti to derail it, came
at 11.10pm on Tuesday. After deliberating for more than seven hours, the
judges convicted all but one of the six accused, all formerly high-flying
judges and lawyers, to jail terms ranging from four years to 13.

The defendants were accused of giving and receiving bribes amounting to 67bn
lira (£24m) to encourage judges in Rome's appeal courts to award ownership
of two business conglomerates, including Italy's biggest publisher,
Mondadori, to Mr Berlusconi's company, Fininvest.

The Prime Minister was originally one of the accused, but dropped off the
list under the statute of limitations because the charges against him were
less serious.

His office responded to the sentencing of Previti, a senator in Mr
Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, harshly. "This is an ugly day for Italian
justice," his spokesman said. Mr Berlusconi added: "The politicisation of
certain magistrates, which has come to condition our political life, is a
problem that must be resolved for the good of the country, of the
institutions and of Italian citizens."

Mr Berlusconi had devoted his political energy to preventing yesterday's
embarrassment. Against angry opposition protests, he rammed through a law
allowing cases to be transformed to a different judiciary if "legitimate
suspicion" that the judges are biased could be proved. But when Previti used
the new law to try to get his case switched from Milan, Italy's highest
court of appeal turned him down.

The sentencing of Previti was seen as a humiliation for Mr Berlusconi, "at
least embarrassing", said Giuseppe D'Avanzo of La Repubblica newspaper, "for
a man who, as proprietor of Mondadori, was the direct benefactor of this
corrupt act". But it was not expected to weaken his grip on power.

Francesco Perfetti, professor of politics at Rome's University of Luiss,
said: "I rule out the possibility that the conviction will have an immediate
impact on the stability of the government." A corruption scandal that broke
during Mr Berlusconi's previous term as Prime Minister, in 1994, hastened
the downfall of that government. But this time his coalition appears more
robust, while the centre-left opposition is in disarray.

Previti, who like the other defendants was not present in court for the
judgment, declared angrily: "[The judges] have brought to a conclusion what
they had decided to do in advance ... I have been persecuted by the 'red
togas'. It's a political sentence. I will appeal."

The verdicts and the sentences vindicated the painstaking prosecution of
Ilda Boccassini, who tracked for the court what one commentator called the
"whirling circuits of money". Huge sums vanished from accounts held by the
lawyers and popped up in accounts owned by the judges.

This is a dark culmination for Mr Berlusconi, but it is also just the
beginning - the verdict in a case in which he stands accused of bribing
judges to gain control of a food company, is expected in the summer.