Berlusconi back in court

ITALIAN prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was in court in Milan yesterday for a hearing into claims he paid a former lawyer €416,000 for false testimony about his business dealings.

Berlusconi is alleged to have paid the money to his former British lawyer David Mills in a case dating back to the 1990s.

Mills, a specialist in offshore tax havens, was convicted by a Milan court in 2009 and sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail, but an appeals court threw out the corruption case in 2010 as the time limit had expired.