Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, goofed embarrassingly when he admitted he had spent millions of Euros on ‘judges’, claiming he was the most persecuted man in history.
Having spent 200 million on ‘consultants and lawyers’, Berlusconi quickly amended his statement. The payments were a result of being engaged in multiple investigations.
“Although he has yet to catch me as a Mafioso”, he joked, “Roberto Maroni, the Interior minister, is very very busy hunting down organized crime gangs.”
This gaff happened just days after Italy’s Constitutional Court overturned a law granting Berlusconi exemption from prosecution. His holding company was commanded to pay 700 million pound in damages to a rival publishing company, owned by Berlusconi’s personal and political rival, Carlo De Beneditti. The case was in reference to a takeover bid, relating to bribing judges in the early 1990s.
Berlusconi has been hounded for decades by legal sagas affecting his personal media and real estate empires. The court ruling reopens his involvement in three trials, including one in which his tax lawyer was found guilty of taking a bribe to protect Berlusconi. It also involved accusations of bribing David Mills, his British former tax accountant, in exchange for lying in court. In spite of Mills saying that he is innocent, he was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.
Berlusconi boldly declared he would ‘forge on’, but argues that the continual persecution is leaving him no time to govern. He says he is “the person who had been most persecuted by judges in the entire history of the word and the history of man,” having made more than 2,500 court appearances since he entered politics 15 years ago.
A member of the European Parliament from the justice-reform minded Italy of Values party, Luigi De Magistris, was greatly satisfaction with the fact that ‘‘The prime minister has today returned to the fold with the rest of us mere mortals, subject to the respect for justice that is at the foundation of our republic.’’
Now the prime minister will have to defend himself in his many more areas, including accusations that he spent the night with a prostitute. Berlusconi has spent the summer defending himself against sex scandals.
Even though his credibility has been severely damaged, Berlusconi still has high popularity ratings.
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