Berlusconi found guilty of bribing Italian senator

Silvio Berlusconi has been sentenced to three years in prison for bribing a senator in 2006 as part of a plot to topple the then-centre-left government.

Berlusconi, 78, will not however have to serve the sentence as the case’s statute of limitations expires later this year, well before any final ruling will have been reached on appeal. However, the statute of limitations is expiring soon, so Berlusconi won’t do prison time. Under Italian law, two levels of appeals must be completed before defendants begin serving a sentence.

A Naples court convicted the ex- prime minister in the case Wednesday and recommended that he serve three years in prison.

Berlusconi was not in court to hear the verdict, delivered by tribunal president Isabella Romani.

Sergio De Gregorio acknowledged accepting the money while a senator for Italy of Values, a party headed by ex- anti-corruption prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro.

De Gregorio, who sat in parliament until 2013, has confessed to receiving 2 million euros in cash and a 1-million-euro grant for a political party he set up after defecting from Prodi’s camp.

“We find this verdict resoundingly unfair and unjustified”, Niccolo Ghedini, a senator for Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, who is also a member of his defence counsel, commented. He was separately sentenced to 20 months in jail after a plea bargaining deal.

Prodi, a ex- European Union commission chief, was the only politician to defeat Berlusconi in elections for the premiership, in 1996 and 2006.

Earlier this year, he completed a community service order for corporate tax fraud but was cleared of having sex with an under-age dancer known as Ruby the Heart-stealer after judges ruled he could not have known she was a minor. The conviction, which was upheld by Italy’s top criminal court, cost him his Senate seat.

Berlusconi rose to the forefront of Italian politics in the 1994 parliamentary elections, when Forza Italia gained a majority just three months after being launched.

The case marks the latest in a string of legal troubles for Berlusconi, the Guardian reported.

Milan prosecutors are investigating whether Berlusconi or his aides paid off witnesses or potential witnesses in the sex case, concerning “bunga-bunga” parties with young starlets and aspiring show girls at the billionaire’s private residences.