The number of trials in which Silvio Berlusconi has been or is accused far exceeds 30. Trials, scattered throughout Italy, in which he was accused of crimes ranging from corruption to aiding in the massacre, from false accounting to extortion, up to contempt of the judicial order and child prostitution and which, except for one in which he was convicted, ended either with not having to proceed for prescription or with acquittal. Or with a filing or acquittal during the investigation or preliminary hearing.
Taking a picture of the judicial history of the leader of Forza Italia, which began before his decision to go into politics and then continued even when he held public roles, the only sentence that became final in 2013 it was 4 years in prison, 3 of which covered by a pardon, for the 7.3 million euro tax fraud committed with the sale of Mediaset TV rights when he was Prime Minister. Conviction that forced him to ask for probation to the social services for 10 and a half months, net of the discount for early release, and led to his forfeiture as senator due to the Severino Law: his incandidability lasted six years.
The other trials instead followed other paths: some ended with filing or acquittal already in the preliminary investigation phase, as happened in those in which his name was associated with the mafia (excluding the one still under investigation in Florence) or in Mediatrade case. Or with acquittal with a doubtful formula, as for one of the episodes of corruption contested in the case Ems/Ariosto, or with the prescription, thanks to both the dilatory technique used by his defense or by the defense of his co-defendants, and the granting of extenuating circumstances and some norms such as the former Cirielli. Suffice it to mention the (prescribed) procedure with the story of the English lawyer at the centre David Mills paid by him to be a reticent witness before the judges who were judging him in the trials for the ‘Bribes to the Finance Police’ and ‘All Iberian‘, the latter case closed in 1999 with a “not having to proceed because the crime is extinguished by prescription” declared in the second degree. In the first instance, the Knight was sentenced to 2 years and 4 months for the illegal financing of PSI leader Bettino Craxi.
But they also intervened on Berlusconi’s judicial curriculum amnesties who, for example, canceled an alleged embezzlement for the affair of villa of Macherio.
The most odious trials for Silvio Berlusconi were perhaps not so much those on the hypothesized corruption of the robes or the buying and selling of senators, but those that concerned the sex scandals, ie the one still in progress for induction to lie in the context of the ‘Escort’ case of Bari and the Ruby case, with its two strands. He came out with a full and definitive acquittal of the charges of child prostitution and extortion and was also exonerated in the Siena and Rome trials in which he was accused of having paid his young witnesses and some of his guests to tell the judges that those who what had been staged in Arcore were only elegant dinners and not ‘risque’ parties. Today, the Milanese judges have acquitted him again for those same charges, together with Ruby-Karima and a group of girls, for a juridical question that canceled any judgment on the merits and made a crime impossible to set up.
Source: Ansa
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