The Hindu : International : Berlusconi cleared of corruption charge

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 12, 2004

International

International

Berlusconi cleared of corruption charge

By John Hooper

ROME, DEC. 11. Italy's Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was last night cleared of the most serious corruption charge hanging over him when a court in Milan ruled that a key accusation — that of bribing a judge with almost $500,000 — was ``out of time''.

Mr. Berlusconi was found not guilty of all other charges.

Reacting to the judgement, Mr. Berlusconi said it was ``better late than never'', and his lawyer, Gaetano Pecorella, announced an appeal against the ``out of time'' verdict to clear the Prime Minister's name completely. ``We are sure to succeed in getting a full acquittal,'' he added.

Under Italy's statute of limitations, defendants accused of crimes committed more than 15 years ago are automatically acquitted. Though this alleged offence happened in 1991, judges decided to halve the period covered by the law because Mr. Berlusconi has a clean criminal record. The decision infuriated Antonio Di Pietro, the crusading anti-corruption prosecutor who pursued Mr. Berlusconi through the courts a decade ago. ``The fact that Berlusconi has once again got off by the skin of his teeth because of a statute of limitations dodge does not detract from the substance of the facts and their incontrovertibility,'' he said.

`Still under a shadow'

Giuseppe Fanfani, of the centre-left Margherita party, said Mr. Berlusconi remained under a shadow because of ``the application of a state of limitations, which in any event implies a guilty verdict''.

Mr. Berlusconi — the first Italian Prime Minister to be tried on criminal charges — was cleared on charges of buying judges in the late 1980s when his business empire was locked in a battle to buy a state-owned food conglomerate. But he was also charged with a payment for unspecified favours to one of Italy's most powerful judges, now retired. The court heard that in 1991 Mr. Berlusconi's former lawyer, Cesare Previti, received $434,404 from the Prime Minister's company, Fininvest, and sent it the following day to Judge Renato Squillante by way of a string of Swiss bank accounts.

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Confidant jailed

AP reports:

A close political ally of Mr. Berlusconi was convicted of ties with the Sicilian Mafia on Saturday and sentenced to nine years in prison.

Marcello Dell'Utri was an executive in Mr. Berlusconi's business empire and is now a Senator in the Premier's Forza Italia party. A Palermo judge read out the verdict, which also banned Dell'Utri from holding public office.

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