Silvio Berlusconi: the man of 2,500 court hearings

This article is taken from the Daily Telegraph (26/10/2012), the bold is mine, no need to add anything else, I'm sure the pattern is pretty easy to spot.

The Italian media mogul himself claims to have spent more than 200 million euros on lawyers to defend him.

In 2009 he declared he was "absolutely the most persecuted man by the judiciary in all the history of the entire world".

Mr Berlusconi is currently on trial in a court in Milan on charges of abuse of office and paying for sex with an alleged under-age prostitute, a Moroccan-born erotic dancer nicknamed 'Ruby the Heart Stealer'. He is alleged to have tried to hush up the affair by having her released from police custody in Milan after she was arrested on suspicion of stealing from a female acquaintance. Mr Berlusconi denies the charges.

But he has never been definitively convicted of any crime.

He has either defeated the charges on appeal – under Italian law he is entitled to two levels of appeal – or the cases have timed out under Italy’s statute of limitations.

Here are some of the most significant allegations of the past 22 years.

In 1990 Mr Berlusconi was declared guilty of false testimony over his membership of "Progaganda 2", a right-wing Masonic lodge which was described as a "state within a state" and counted among its members prominent industrialists, politicians, military leaders and journalists.
However, an amnesty passed the previous year meant that a court did not pass sentence on Mr Berlusconi.

In 1994, shortly after he was elected as prime minister for the first time, he was accused of bribing a member of the financial police. He was sentenced in 1997 to 33 months in prison but was acquitted on appeal in 2000 because the time limit for the offence expired.

In 1995 Mr Berlusconi was accused of having bought the football player Gianluigi Lentini for his AC Milan club with money from a slush fund. The signing for £13m in 1992 made Lentini the world's most expensive player at the time and the subsequent allegations attracted worldwide attention. However, in 2002 Mr Berlusconi pushed a law through parliament which partially decriminalised false accounting, and ensured that he would not stand trial for the accusations.

Again in 1995 Mr Berlusconi was accused of false accounting in his purchase of the Medusa cinema company, and he was later sentenced to 16 months in prison in 1997. However, he was acquitted on appeal in 2000. That judgment was upheld by the Italian supreme court in 2001.

Also in 1995 the Italian premier was accused of illegally financing the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) through an offshore company. He was sentenced to two years and four months in jail for paying 21 billion lire (about 10 million euros, or £8.3 million) to Bettino Craxi, his mentor and a former prime minister, via an offshore bank account code-named "All Iberian". But the case was later dropped because the limitation period expired.

In 1998 Mr Berlusconi was accused of bribing a judge during his holding company Fininvest's buy-out of the Mondadori publishing house. A prima facie case was issued, but the magistrate decided to drop the charges. The state attorney appealed against that decision. At the appeal level the case timed out under the statute of limitations.

Again in 1998, Mr Berlusconi was accused of bribing judges to block the buy-out of the food industry conglomerate SME by the Italian industrialist Carlo De Benedetti in 1985. The supreme court acquitted Mr Berlusconi in 2007.

In March 2006, Milan prosecutors asked a judge to order David Mills, a British lawyer and the estranged husband of former cabinet minister Tessa Jowell, and Mr Berlusconi to stand trial on corruption charges. Mills was sentenced in February 2009 to four years and six months in prison for accepting a £400,000 bribe from Mr Berlusconi to give false evidence on his behalf in corruption trials in 1997 and 1998.
The sentence was overturned a year later. Mr Berlusconi was jointly accused when the trial began but his government passed a law last year giving the prime minister and other top Italian officials immunity from prosecution.

In July 2008, Mr Berlusconi and others were acquitted by a Spanish court after being indicted for charges of tax fraud and violation of antitrust laws regarding the private TV network Telecinco.

 

Italians are 'choosy'

Elsa Fornero, the Italian Minister for Work and Pensions under the Monti Government, said during a press conference this week, that young people shouldn't be too choosy when looking for a job, especially if it's the first one.

I must say that I broadly agree with her and, writing in English for a non-Italian audience, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it. However, to say that in Italy it's probably only a bit less unpopular than admitting to like the gnamgnam style (which I hate BTW).

Although it is very true that most young people cannot find any job at the moment, let alone the DREAM job, it is also true that in Italy it's not unusual for "young" people to complete a 3-year undergraduate course in 10 years, while getting no work experience and being supported by their parents.

Facebook and Twitter are exploding with claims that she is out of touch and has no idea of what the situation is, propelled by headlines in every single media outlet where a small sentence has been taken out of context to generate headlines and create the choosygate.

Ms Fornero must have one of the most difficult jobs at the moment, being minister for Work and Pensions in a country when there's no work and no much money for pensions, to me she's doing quite a good job. The current Government is actually trying to build opportunities for young people, something that to be honest the Berlusconi Government also did very well, but only if you were young, female and willing to sleep with him with absolutely no CV (in that case you might even be made Minister of Education, Environment or Equal Opportunities).

Elsa Fornero

The shadow of Berlusconi

I have been extremely quiet on my blog recently for various reasons.

The main reason is that this blog started out of the frustration caused by the politics in Italy and especially by Berlusconi, and as he has been removed from power, in a way I had less to write about.

However, with a bit more time in my hands these days I have been wanting to start writing again, and today's news of his court appearance gave me the final push. It is sadly clear that this man has no intention to go away, and he is still fooling most of the population. Italians have a very short memory and are still fooled by his media power. Watch one day of Italian TV, and you'll see pensioners claiming that it's better to "be like him, than be a faggot", housewives justifying that "he needs a little release because he works so hard" and so on.

He still manages to bring out very strong feelings from the population, you either hate him or love him, but I'm afraid those who love him might be the majority.

With an opposition still in shambles, and his party that cannot survive without him, I can only pray that Monti stays where he is for as long as possible. Supporting somebody that has not been democratically elected goes against every principle I believe in, but when I look at what's happening in Greece I can't help but thinking that without him, Italy would be exactly in the same situation.