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Justice and politics in Italy

Trials and tribulations

May 1st 2003
From The Economist print edition


An embarrassing conviction for the prime minister's friend

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CESARE PREVITI, one of the closest friends of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, is a crook. At least that's what a court in Milan decided on April 29th. It found Mr Previti guilty of bribing judges in Rome to obtain rulings favourable to two clients of his legal practice, and sentenced him to 11 years in jail.

Mr Previti is certain to appeal against the verdict. Whoever loses at the intermediate appeal stage is sure to resort to the Supreme Court, a process that could take at least another two years.




Milan


Italy


Corruption


Prime minister, Ministry of Justice (both sites in Italian)





The verdict came in two trials (known as IMI-SIR and Mondadori, after the companies involved) which had, in effect, been rolled into one, as the two had defendants in common. Also found guilty were two of the judges who took bribes, both Mr Previti's fellow-bribers and two members of the Rovelli family, which was one of Mr Previti's clients. One defendant in the IMI-SIR case, a former judge, was acquitted.

Mr Previti's other client in one of the cases under judgment was Mr Berlusconi. Along with Mr Previti and several others, he is also a defendant in a third judge-bribing case, known as the SME trial (after a food conglomerate of that name), which is expected to finish next year.

So where do the verdict and sentence leave Mr Berlusconi? In difficulty, because Mr Previti, now found guilty in the Mondadori case, was acting in the interest of Mr Berlusconi, who gained control of Mondadori, an Italian publishing group, in 1991 after a bitter battle with Carlo De Benedetti, a rich businessman. The prosecution alleged that Mr Berlusconi, via intermediaries who included Mr Previti, bribed an appeal-court judge, Vittorio Metta, who was sentenced this week to 13 years in jail, with 425m lire (then worth around $335,000) to rule in his favour in a case that decided the battle with Mr De Benedetti.

The Supreme Court quashed judge-bribing charges in this case against Mr Berlusconi, under a statute of limitations, on the eve of Italy's general election in 2001. This was instead of absolving Mr Berlusconi of the offence, as he had requested.

Controversy has dogged all three judge-bribing trials. New legislation passed by Mr Berlusconi's government in October 2001 was used to challenge the admissibility of the prosecution's evidence, but the courts were unmoved. Similarly, Mr Berlusconi and Mr Previti did not succeed in their attempts earlier this year to use new laws to get their trials transferred from Milan, where Mr Berlusconi and his friends say judges are biased against them.

The past two weeks have been no different. On April 26th, just as the three trial judges in Milan were, for the fourth time, about to retire to consider their verdicts, Mr Previti held a press conference in Rome to announce his seventh request to have them replaced. Milan's appeal court, having rejected his sixth request just two weeks ago, promptly rejected his seventh on April 29th, thus allowing the trial judges to make their verdicts.

But this was only after the president of the three trial judges, Paolo Carfi, had turned down a plea from Mr Previti, a member of parliament for Mr Berlusconi's ruling Forza Italia party and a former minister of defence, to postpone the verdicts. Mr Previti wanted a delay until the final appeals court had ruled on his appeals against the recent rejection by Milan's appeal court of his sixth and seventh requests to have the trial judges replaced. The basis for Mr Previti's plea was the damage to his political health and personal wealth that would flow from a guilty verdict, even if overturned on appeal.



“We have a fantastic relationship in every respect”


Italy's television stations have been rather more receptive to Mr Previti's words. Extracts of his press conference were broadcast on news programmes by RAI, the state broadcaster. Rete 4, a commercial channel owned by Mediaset, which in turn is controlled by Mr Berlusconi's family, was even more helpful. It ditched a history documentary on the eve of the verdict so that its viewers could watch Mr Previti make his case to the press.

“We have a fantastic relationship in every respect,” Mr Previti said of his friendship with Mr Berlusconi. Indeed, ever since he returned to power nearly two years ago, Mr Berlusconi has stood shoulder to shoulder with his co-defendant. He turned up—outside the courtroom—at the SME trial two weeks ago in a show of solidarity for his friend, telling journalists that Mr Previti was a “persecuted politician”.

As well as claiming to be a scapegoat and victim of a political trial, Mr Previti launched an angry assault on bias among the Milanese judges and on the honesty of his prosecutors. It was they, he said, who should be investigated and punished. Roberto Castelli, the justice minister, told a newspaper that he had asked the Milan courts about allegations in a dossier submitted to him by Mr Previti.

Here the affair gets serious for Italy, not just Mr Berlusconi. After the verdict, the prime minister called for stronger parliamentary immunity, denouncing “politicised judges” who cannot be allowed “to choose for themselves, with coupsters' logic, the government that they prefer”. The council of the judiciary replied furiously that the judges' “honour and impartiality” had been insulted. It is not the first such clash, but it is the worst yet.


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[anton]

In Origine Postato da antonio
nei paesi anglosassoni la sola evasione fiscale , quale quella dichiarata dal previti avrebbe comportatato la richiesta di dimissioni...da parte degli stessi colleghi di partito..

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0H!!!!! MA QUI SIAMO IN ITALIA...... PATRIA DEL DIRITTO E SEDE DEL PAPATO .. FARO DI VIRTU

[Barbanera]

In Origine Postato da antonio
nei paesi anglosassoni la sola evasione fiscale , quale quella dichiarata dal previti avrebbe comportatato la richiesta di dimissioni...da parte degli stessi colleghi di partito..

Solo le dimissioni?

Arresto no?

B.