Quote:Silvio Berlusconi's critics toast former PM's ignominious exit from senate

Italian parliament expels 77-year-old after conviction for tax fraud at his Mediaset empire but tycoon vows to stay in politics

• Lizzy Davies in Rome
  
• The Guardian, Wednesday 27 November 2013
  
• Jump to comments (135)
  

Silvio Berlusconi tells supporters that he will remain in politics. Opponents gathered outside the senate called for him to be jailed. Photograph: Eidon/Demotix/Corbis

Showing on a loop on the screens outside Palazzo Grazioli was a compilation of clips that had a strangely retro feel to it. In one, Silvio Berlusconi was laughing with Tony Blair; in another, he was chatting affably with George W Bush. Jacques Chirac, Kofi Annan, even Pope Benedict XVI: the roll call of former leaders went on and Berlusconi, in a somewhat more youthful guise, was with them all.
Across town, in a historic and at times openly confrontational series of votes, Italian senators were bringing an end to the former prime minister's near two decades in parliament. But, lest anyone think the 77-year-old might take that as his cue to join his old confrères in retirement, he made it clear that, as far as he was concerned, his political career was still very much ongoing.
"Today they [my opponents] are celebrating because they have managed to bring an adversary an enemy before the executioner's squad. They are euphoric," he told the supporters who had gathered outside his mansion to hear of his "persecution" by the country's judiciary. "They have been waiting for it for 20 years … But I don't believe they have definitively won the match of democracy and of freedom."
Waving her flag dreamily as the strains of party anthems thundered around Piazza Venezia, Mariella, a fan from the southern region of Calabria, gave her verdict: "It's a coup d'état. Because justice is not a weapon." Rather than consigned to history, she added, Berlusconi was still the man to lead Italy forward. "Even at 76, 77 years old, if he can rouse young people like that, he's the future," she said.
Most Italians disagree with that assessment. As news of the expulsion came through, a group of anti-Berlusconi activists began celebrating outside the senate with spumante (sparkling wine) and chants calling for the former prime minister to be sent to prison. The move ends the partial immunity from which, as a senator, Berlusconi benefited, though his lawyers have dismissed his arrest as a possibility.
The landmark expulsion confirmed by the senate speaker at 5.42pm after several hours of fractious debate followed Berlusconi's definitive conviction for tax fraud at his Mediaset television empire on 1 August. He denies any wrongdoing, and ever since, the political debate of Italy a country in grave need of concerted action to lift it out of its longest postwar recession has been dominated by the saga.
Though not part of his actual sentence, the ousting was deemed necessary under an anti-corruption law passed last year that prohibits anyone with a conviction of more than two years from holding elected office or standing for office for six years. Berlusconi was also ordered to serve a four-year prison sentence, commuted to one, which will be enforced next year, either as community service or house arrest.
In the senate on Wednesday, centre-left MPs from the Democratic party (PD) combined with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and others to approve the expulsion to the obvious rage of Berlusconi loyalists. Several of his female senators had come dressed in black, at least one with an armband. At one point, they began chanting "Silvio, Silvio".
The vote attracted some of the recently appointed senators-for-life, among them the architect Renzo Piano.
In a defiant address that sounded much like an election campaign speech, Berlusconi acknowledged that the expulsion one of the heaviest blows in his eventful political career had made for "a bitter day, a day of mourning for democracy". But, speaking to fans waving the flags of his newly revived Forza Italia (FI) party, he said he would continue to "fight for our freedom" from the outside.
"We will stay on the field," he said, pointing to Beppe Grillo, figurehead of the M5S, and Matteo Renzi, the Florence mayor likely to become the next chief of the PD, as examples of leaders orchestrating their parties from outside the national parliament.
"My father has been stripped of his seat as senator, but it will certainly not be today's vote that will undermine his leadership and his commitment," said Marina Berlusconi, the media magnate's eldest daughter, who is regularly tipped by the Italian media as his most likely political heir a prospect she rejects.
For the moment, Berlusconi will remain at the helm of the party named after a football chant, which he first launched for his entrance into politics in 1994. Replaced as the main centre-right party by the Freedom People (PdL) for several years until this summer, FI was reformed and, on Tuesday, moved into opposition by Berlusconi, who has seen his power base split by a breakaway faction led by an erstwhile loyalist, Angelino Alfano.
Alfano, the interior and deputy prime minister, has pledged his allegiance to Enrico Letta's government, which emerged stronger from a confidence vote on Tuesday.
Most analysts agree that, as old age and party splits combine with continuing legal woes, Berlusconi's farewell from politics is inevitable. Among other matters, he has been ordered to stand trial on charges of bribing a senator in an attempt to bring down Romano Prodi's government, and is appealing against a first-grade conviction handed down in June for having sex with an underage girl and abusing his office to cover it up. He denies the allegations in both cases.
But the question most observers ask is how long his goodbye will be - and nobody believes that the expulsion by itself will stop him. "It's certainly not the end for Berlusconi. He will join Beppe Grillo as a party leader outside of parliament and in 10 days time Matteo Renzi will be a party leader outside of parliament," said James Walston, of the American University of Rome. "Even when he's barred from taking part in politics, he'll take part in politics."

Quote:Silvio and the Cosa Nostra: Berlusconi's links with Italian organised crime confirmed



Former Prime Minister's involvement with Sicilian mafia is proven as his middle-man to Cosa Nostra arrested

MICHAEL DAY


Monday 12 May 2014

Silvio Berlusconi Italy's former Prime Minister and one of the world's most recognisable politicians did business with the mafia for nearly two decades.

That is the conclusion of the country's Supreme Court of Cassation in Rome. The billionaire tycoon, nicknamed the Teflon Don, worked with Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia, via his conduit and former senator Marcello Dell'Utri after judges sentenced Dell'Utri to seven years for mafia association.
Three-time premier Berlusconi, 77, has always denied rumours that mob links were behind the large and opaquely sourced investments used to kickstart his construction and media businesses in the 1970s and 1980s.
But Supreme Court judges accepted prosecutor Aurelio Galasso's claim that "for 18 years, from 1974 to 1992, Marcello Dell'Utri was the guarantor of the agreement between Berlusconi and Cosa Nostra". The verdict confirms the sentence imposed on 72-year-old Dell'Utri by Palermo's Court of Appeal in March last year.
"In that period of time we're talking about a continuous crime," said Mr Galasso. He said the deal between the mafia and Berlusconi, mediated by Dell'Utri, was formed in 1974 and "was implemented voluntarily and knowingly".
Berlusconi yesterday attacked "biased" judges. "[The rulings] are what the left has tried to do to me since 94," he told Ansa news agency.
Giuseppe Di Peri, the lawyer for Dell'Utri who has always denied mob links, said his client would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
[IMG]http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article9358799.ece/alternates/w460/26-Dell'Utri-Getty.jpg[/IMG]Former senator Marcello Dell'Utri was sentenced to seven years for mafia association (Getty)
Berlusconi's lawyers made similar noises following the tycoon's conviction last August for tax fraud, but did not get very far with appeals to the European courts. The confirmation of Berlusconi's long-suspected link to organised crime comes as he begins nine months of community service for the tax crime.
Berlusconi will not be tried for his links to the mob, however, because the statute of limitations for mafia-related offences kicks in after 20 years. But following a legal war lasting two decades, prosecutors have finally claimed the scalp of Dell'Utri, just before the statute could save him.
Around 40 former mafia members have given evidence that the Palermo-born politician and businessman was Berlusconi's key emissary with Cosa Nostra. One high-profile informant, Giovanni "The Pig" Brusca, told judges in Palermo in 2010 that Berlusconi poured as much as 600 million old lire a year (£300,000) into Cosa Nostra's coffers, which was "tied to his business activities in Sicily".
As far back as 1974, Dell'Utri hired the Cosa Nostra figure Vittorio Mangano to work as the "stable master" in Berlusconi's Arcore villa. It is widely believed that Mangano's presence was to deter other criminal groups from kidnapping the mogul's children, and that Berlusconi chose or was obliged to launder millions of pounds of mob money.
The authorities became aware that the gangster Mangano was working at the mogul's Arcore mansion after the attempted abduction of one of Berlusconi's dinner guests, an episode that was linked to the mafioso.
Both the mogul and Dell'Utri claimed they had had no idea who Mangano was. Berlusconi said during his 1994 election campaign that he fired Mangano after the bungled kidnapping. But when police arrived almost three weeks later he was still there. He also returned to Berlusconi's mansion after a month in prison. Five years later, police tapping into Mangano's phone calls during his stay at a Milan hotel recorded several conversations he had with Dell'Utri.
The telephone surveillance was designed to keep track of Mangano's activity as the Cosa Nostra's "bridgehead in the north of Italy", according to the Palermo prosecutor Paolo Borsellino, who would later be killed by a mafia bomb.
Mangano was suspected of organising heroine shipments and laundering the cash in Milan's financial community.
Prosecutors later probing Dell'Utri's connections with Cosa Nostra even found a note in his diary recording how the mobster paid him a visit in Milan in 1993, while he was busy organising Berlusconi's first general election campaign this despite it being public knowledge that Mangano had been sent to prison by then magistrate Borsellino for much of the 1980s.
Dell'Utri, who was then head of Berlusconi's multi-million pound TV advertising empire Publitalia, later went on to become a senator for his Forza Italia party.
Now, following his conviction, Italian authorities will seek Dell'Utri's extradition from Lebanon, where he fled last month before the Supreme Court ruled on his fate. Interpol agents arrested him in a five-star hotel in Beirut with €30,000 (£24,500) in cash, days after Italian authorities sounded the alarm.
In a statement issued through his lawyer, Giuseppe Di Peri, Dell'Utri denied he'd fled justice. Judges in Palermo, however, declared that so much cash and 50 kilos of luggage beside amounted to evidence of a "planned and deliberate desire to flee justice".
It was reported that Dell'Utri had been making use of his time abroad to arrange business deals involving the investment of millions of euros of Berlusconi's money.
The pair appear loyal to each other and are prepared take their shared secrets to the grave. Dell'Utri is also one of the select few non-Berlusconi family members assigned a spot in the tycoon's elaborate Arcore mausoleum.

Quote:

Italy appeals court clears Berlusconi in sex trial

By Ilaria Polleschi
MILAN Fri Jul 18, 2014 8:14am EDT


Forza Italia leader Silvio Berlusconi gestures as he speaks during a party rally in Milan May 23, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Alessandro Garofalo











(Reuters) - An Italian appeals court on Friday overturned Silvio Berlusconi's conviction on charges of abuse of office and paying for sex with a minor, in a significant legal victory for the former prime minister.
The Milan court unexpectedly threw out the guilty verdict handed down by a lower tribunal last year, which had sentenced Berlusconi to seven years in jail and banned him from holding public office.
Berlusconi was accused of paying for sex with former nightclub dancer Kharima El Mahroug, better known under her stage name "Ruby the Heartstealer", when she was under 18, and of abusing his authority to get her released from police custody over unrelated theft accusations.
In a brief statement read out in court, the judges fully acquitted 77-year old Berlusconi on both charges. They will release their motivations in 90 days.
"A verdict that goes beyond our rosiest expectations," Berlusconi's lawyer Franco Coppi told reporters.
The four-times prime minister, still the most influential politician on the center right, had always denied the charges, accusing the Milan magistrates of hounding him for political reasons.
"Finally justice has been done," said Simone Furlan of Berlusconi's Forza Italia party in a statement. "Now, let's all focus on good politics to relaunch Forza Italia, tightly knit around our great leader Silvio Berlusconi."
Friday's verdict in the most sensational trial faced by Berlusconi is not definitive as prosecutors could lodge an appeal with Italy's top court.
The final ruling in the so-called Ruby trial could have implications for Berlusconi and his freedom to engage in political activity beyond the case itself.
As well as its implications for Berlusconi himself, the verdict removes a potential threat to Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's constitutional reform drive, which depends on an accord with the centre-right. That accord could have been threatened had Berlusconi's conviction been upheld.
Berlusconi received a definitive conviction for tax fraud last year and was stripped of his seat in parliament. He was given a four-year jail sentence, but that was commuted to a year's community service under a general amnesty, leaving him largely free to campaign in elections and play a political role.
However, a second definitive conviction in a criminal trial would violate the terms of the amnesty. That could mean Berlusconi would have to serve time under house arrest.

Quote:Disgraced Berlusconi faces losing control of his party as support and funding slump




Disgraced former PM blamed for demise of the once-mighty Forza Italia

MICHAEL DAY

ROME

Friday 06 February 2015

It has dominated the centre-right of Italian politics for 20 years, but now the wheels appear to be falling off the Forza Italia party, in line with the declining fortunes of its founder, the billionaire media mogul and three-time Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Membership of the party, which Mr Berlusconi created in 1993 and with which he swept to power months later, has collapsed from a high of 400,000 to just 60,000. Its accounts are in the red and at the end of last year it sacked 50 workers.
In December, instead of the usually sumptuous Forza Italia Christmas dinner, the tycoon's political troops were treated to a forlorn outing to a non-descript trattoria on the outskirts of Rome even if the mogul took the microphone and regaled diners with self-aggrandising jokes.
Meanwhile, Forza Italia's poll ratings have sunk to 15 per cent and it is in danger of being overtaken by the right-wing Northern League, which has surged on an immigrant-baiting, anti-euro ticket.
The impression of chaos has been underlined by the emergence of one leading dissident, Raffaele Fitto, who has publicly attacked the mogul's leadership.

Marcello Veneziani, a leading political pundit at Mr Berlusconi's conservative newspaper Il Giornale, told The Independent that Forza Italia was in crisis, and blamed a fight for the succession. "The real problem is that the Berlusconi era is ending. That's why the party is exploding," he said.
But if Forza Italia's problems are in part financial and internecine, the other menace is political: Matteo Renzi. Italy's young, cocky, and ambitious Prime Minister appears to have run rings around Mr Berlusconi, using the mogul's political support to pass political reforms when it suited him, before dumping him when it did not.
After the humiliation of his community service stint for tax fraud and his expulsion from parliament, the tycoon could at least take comfort from the fact that Forza Italia was still in a position to make deals with Matteo Renzi's government over political reform.
But last week Mr Berlusconi let it been known that the "Nazarene pact" (named after the address of the party headquarters where it was thrashed out) with Mr Renzi over reforms was dead. Wheeler-dealing Mr Renzi effectively replied: "Fine, we don't need you any more."
By last week securing the election as head of state of Sergio Mattarella a political enemy of Mr Berlusconi Mr Renzi has managed to assuage left-wing rebels in his party.
He carried out this sly manoeuvre only after enlisting Mr Berlusconi's support to push electoral reforms through the Senate. And the Prime Minister received another boost yesterday with news that six centrist senators from the small Civic Choice party were preparing to defect to his Democratic Party.
Mr Berlusconi originally felt compelled to deal with Mr Renzi in the hope of legislative guarantees to protect his business empire, badly wounded by a vicious recession. "Everything has been about saving his businesses," said political scientist Lorenzo de Sio of Rome's LUISS University.
But even that backroom guarantee now appears to have been ripped up: new media laws regarding broadcast frequencies will, according to La Repubblica newspaper, add €50m to the costs of Mr Berlusconi's cash-strapped Mediaset TV empire.
Mr Berlusconi formed Forza Italia and entered politics 21 years ago to avoid prison and save his business from left-wing opponents.
But now, pundits say, things are coming full circle. Among the legislation that he introduced in the 1990s to protect himself and his companies, the bill to remove the crime of false accounting from the penal code was among the most notorious.
Mr Renzi is now reintroducing this crime. "It will be good for legality, good for encouraging foreign investment," said Mr De Sio. "And given who got rid of it, its reintroduction will be very symbolic."

Quote:Jul 9 2015 5:31AM



Berlusconi sentenced to 3 years in jail for corruption: Italian media

Berlusconi paid a former senator around 3 million euros for changing his political stand. Picture:Twitter


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Italian three-time former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi Wednesday was sentenced to three years in jail for corruption by a court in Naples, southern Italy.

The 78-year-old media magnate described the verdict as "absurd" and the consequence of a "judicial persecution" aimed at damaging his "image of the protagonist of politics," reported the national newspaper Corriere della Sera.

According to the court, Berlusconi paid a former senator around 3 million euros (3.3 million U.S. dollars) for changing his political stand.

Berlusconi's lawyer Niccolo Ghedini said the verdict was "clamorously unfair and unjustified," wishing the appeals court upturn the sentence.

Italy's judicial system offers defendants three levels of trial before a conviction becomes definitive, and both sides of law cases have the right to appeal to higher courts.

Berlusconi's case, however, is expected to run out of time in November, Ghedini underlined.

Earlier Berlusconi had ended a one-year community service sentence for a tax fraud conviction.

Berlusconi, involved in a number of trials and judicial investigations, has been banned by law from holding any public office until 2019.