A court in Naples on Wednesday sentenced former Italian premier and media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi to three years in prison for bribing a senator as part of a plot to destabilise a 2006-08 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.
“It was a good trial, passionate, but in terms of consequences the imminent expiration date takes all the pathos out of the verdict,” said prosecutor Henry John Woodcock.
“It was a good trial, passionate, but in terms of consequences the imminent expiration date takes all the pathos out of the verdict,” said prosecutor Henry John Woodcock.
The case centred around bribes totalling three million euros ($3.3 million) that were paid, through an intermediary, to Senator Sergio De Gregorio in order to get him to leave the coalition of then premier Romano Prodi.
The idea was to further weaken an already fragile coalition and the defection was widely seen as hurting Prodi’s government, which collapsed in 2008, two years after it was elected. Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia party won the resulting election and he served a third term as Italian premier until 2011.
Source: ngrguardiannews
Source: ngrguardiannews
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