Berlusconi: I will not go into exile — I’m ready for jail

Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi said he would not flee Italy and was ready to go to jail rather than face house arrest or community service if a court upholds his conviction for tax fraud next week.

Italy’s highest appeals court will tomorrow hear Berlusconi’s final appeal against a four-year prison sentence and a ban from public office for tax fraud in connection with the purchase of broadcasting rights by his television network Mediaset.

He told Libero, a newspaper which supports him, that he would never become a fugitive like the late Bettino Craxi, a former prime minister who fled to Tunisia to escape a jail sentence for corruption and spent the last years of his life in exile.