Berlusconi Firm Fined 560 Million Euros in Bribery Appeal
A Milan court ordered Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest company Saturday to pay rival media group CIR 560 million euros after it bribed a judge to approve a company takeover.
The Milan appeals court reduced by a quarter the original 750-million-Euro ($1-billion) damages claim that a civil court had ordered the holding company to pay in October 2009.
This was compensation for Fininvest wresting control of the leading Mondadori publishing house from Compagnie Industriali Riunite (CIR) in 1990.
A judge ruled in 2009 that Berlusconi was "co-responsible" for the bribery of a judge who decided in favor of Fininvest in the takeover battle.
The judge was convicted of corruption in 2007 and sentenced to two years and nine months in prison, while the Fininvest lawyer who bribed him was given a sentence of one year and six months.
CIR, whose honorary president is Berlusconi rival Carlo de Benedetti, controlled the newsweekly L'Espresso and the left-leaning daily newspaper La Repubblica, both avid chroniclers of the sex scandals that have been dogging the Italian premier.
In an appeal by Fininvest, appeals judges on Saturday adjusted the fine and ruled that the damages incurred by CIR amounted to 540 million euros as at the date of the initial judgment, and a total 560 million with interest.
"Our advocates are looking into a further appeal," the prime minister's daughter and Fininvest president Marina Berlusconi said after the ruling.
"We are convinced we are in the right, we will not let ourselves be intimidated," she said while denouncing the damages figure as "double the value of Fininvest's stake in Mondadori".
The fine was payable immediately, the judges said.
The ruling represents a major setback for Berlusconi who on Tuesday withdrew a controversial law proposal to suspend all company fines above 10 million euros imposed by lower courts and over 20 million by appeals courts pending a final ruling by the country's highest court.
The proposal, included at the last minute in an austerity plan as it was to go before parliament for debate, was widely criticized as a bid to shield Fininvest from paying any fine the appeals judges may impose.
Earlier this week, the prime minister said he was "certain that the appeals court of Milan cannot but annul the civil court judgment, which was absolutely unfounded and profoundly unjust".
He defended the proposed amendment as a means of protecting companies from financial troubles caused by "erroneous" court judgments, and said workers in companies that flounder under such fines should blame opposition parties for their "shameful" resistance to the now cancelled measure.
The premier is currently facing three trials, including one for allegedly paying to have sex with a Moroccan girl nicknamed "Ruby" when she was just 17 years old, and another for bribing a witness to lie about his business dealings.
Berlusconi cannot be prosecuted in the Mondadori case, as the facts legally prescribed in 2001 -- meaning the window-period for legal action had expired.
Source: Agence France Presse
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