Top Italian court reviews law shielding Berlusconi
Dogged by months of sex scandals and reeling from a weekend court ruling that his Fininvest holding company must pay €750 million to a rival media group, the billionaire prime minister insists he will see out his five-year term.
“Nothing can make us betray the mandate entrusted to us by the Italian people,” said Berlusconi, elected to a third term in May 2008 with a comfortable majority.
Criminal cases involving the media tycoon could become active if the Constitutional Court’s 15 judges overturn the law pushed through just six weeks after he swept back to power.
They include one in which the 73-year-old leader is accused of having paid €400,000 to his tax lawyer, David Mills of Britain, in return for false testimony in two trials in the 1990s.
Mills, who was tried separately, is appealing a guilty verdict reached in February, when he was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail.
In the Saturday ruling against Fininvest, Berlusconi was found “co-responsible” for the bribery of a judge who decided in favour of the holding company during its takeover battle with Compagnie Industriali Riunite for the Mondadori publishing house.
Titillating scandals such as Berlusconi’s unexplained relationship with an 18-year-old aspiring model — prompting his wife to seek a divorce — and an allegation that he spent a night with a call girl may be the least of his woes, some analysts say.
“The risk is that the shadow of a conviction weighs far heavier than his sexual escapades, which have mostly made his voters laugh,” said Marco Tarchi, political science professor in Florence.
The law under review yesterday grants immunity to the holders of Italy’s four top political jobs — prime minister, president and the speakers of the two houses of parliament — while they are in office.
Judges in Milan and Rome say the measure violates the constitutional guarantee of equality before the law.
Lawyers for Berlusconi stressed that he enjoys immunity only while in office, and said his duties as prime minister distinguish him from other citizens.
“The prime minister... should be considered the ‘first above equals’,” argued lawyer Gaetano Pecorella, coining a variant phrase from the Latin “primus inter pares” or “first among equals”.
The public and journalists attended the first two-and-a-half hours of the hearing, and the judges were deliberating yesterday afternoon.
Italian media say their vote could be delayed as long as two weeks — based on a court file containing seven volumes and 3,218 pages.
Five of the 15 judges are reportedly undecided on a ruling that requires a minimum of eight votes to prevail.
Berlusconi’s battles with the law have marked his public life since he burst onto the political scene in the mid-1990s.
He has faced charges including corruption, tax fraud and illegally financing political parties.
Although some initial judgments have gone against the flamboyant leader, he has never been definitively convicted.
The prime minister has repeatedly accused magistrates of conducting a politically motivated campaign against him.
Mills and Berlusconi, along with a dozen other defendants, are also accused of tax fraud in the purchase of film rights in the US by Mediaset, the television group owned by the Berlusconi family.
