Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was on Friday night cleared of the most serious corruption charge hanging over him when a Milan court ruled that a key accusation — that of bribing a judge with almost $500 000 — was ”out of time”.
He was found not guilty of all other charges.
Reacting to the judgement, he said it is ”better late than never”, and his lawyer, Gaetano Pecorella, announced an appeal against the ”out of time” verdict to clear the prime minister’s name completely.
”We are sure to succeed in getting a full acquittal,” he added.
Under Italy’s statute of limitations, defendants accused of crimes committed more than 15 years ago are automatically acquitted.
Though this alleged offence happened in 1991, judges decided to halve the period covered by the law because Berlusconi has a clean criminal record.
The decision infuriated Antonio di Pietro, the crusading anti-corruption prosecutor who pursued Berlusconi through the courts a decade ago.
”The fact that Berlusconi has once again got off by the skin of his teeth because of a statute-of-limitations dodge does not detract from the substance of the facts and their incontrovertibility,” he said.
Giuseppe Fanfani, of the centre-left Margherita party, said Berlusconi remains under a shadow because of ”the application of a statute of limitations, which in any event implies a guilty verdict”.
Berlusconi — the first Italian prime minister to be tried on criminal charges — was cleared on charges of buying judges in the late 1980s when his business empire was locked in a battle to buy a state-owned food conglomerate.
He was also charged with a payment for unspecified favours to one of Italy’s most powerful judges, now retired.
The court was told that in 1991, Berlusconi’s former lawyer Cesare Previti received $434 404 from the prime minister’s company, Fininvest, and sent it the following day to Judge Renato Squillante by way of a string of Swiss bank accounts and a Panama-registered company. Another Milan court ruled last year that the payment was a bribe.
Prosecutors had asked for Berlusconi to be jailed for eight years and barred for life from public office. But they produced no evidence to show that he had known about, or authorised, the alleged bribes.
Berlusconi has long contended that left-wing state prosecutors are trying to discredit him with a string of trumped-up accusations.
Friday’s verdict will strengthen the government in its efforts to bring changes to the legal system.
Last month, judges and prosecutors went on strike for the third time since Berlusconi came to power in protest at a Bill that, they claim, undermines their independence.
One of Berlusconi’s ministers, Claudio Scajola, said: ”This sentence marks an irreversible defeat for politicised, inquisitorial [prosecutors].”
The verdict will also free the prime minister to concentrate on winning the next election for his right-wing coalition, an alliance of former neo-fascists, conservative Christian Democrats and the regionalist Northern League.
Berlusconi announced on Thursday that he intends to replace the law-regulating party access to television and radio, and introduce new electoral procedures.
The trial that ended on Friday began in March 2000, but was stopped after a government-sponsored law made the prime minister and four other senior office-holders immune from prosecution.
It resumed in April after Italy’s top court ruled the legislation unconstitutional.
Cesare Previti, who served in Berlusconi’s first government in 1994, was convicted last year of bribing judges on Fininvest’s behalf. He is appealing against his sentence. — Guardian Unlimited Â