The former head of the Italian government, who died Monday at the age of 86, accumulated throughout his public life a series of trials of all kinds. Almost all of them ended in an acquittal or a dismissal.
“I spent 770 million euros for 105 lawyers who assisted me during the trials”had once evaluated Silvio Berlusconi. The former head of the Italian government, who died on Monday June 12 at the age of 86, will also go down in history for his countless run-ins with the law. Almost all of these cases ended in final acquittals, dismissals or dismissals. Silvio Berlusconi has always claimed his innocence, considering himself the victim of judicial harassment fomented by left-wing magistrates for political purposes. Franceinfo looks back on some of the emblematic cases that have marked the career of “rider“.
>> Follow in our live the reactions to the death of Silvio Berlusconi
The scandal of the “Bunga bunga” and “Rubygate” parties
The one who held the post of President of the Italian Council three times (equivalent to Prime Minister), from 1994 to 2011, its found entangled in a myriad of lawsuits related to his infamous and sulphurous “Bunga bunga” parties. This Judicial history begins in 2010, when Silvio Berlusconi was accused of abuse of power for having protected a young Moroccan nightclub dancer, Karima El-Mahroug. Arrested for larceny, the young woman, known by the artist name “Ruby”, is released thanks to the intervention of the Italian leader, who claims that she is the niece of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president of the era.
The following year, Silvio Berlusconi was accused of having paid Ruby, aged 17 in 2010, for sex at these “Bunga bunga” parties, “orgies” for some people, “elegant dinners” for their organizer. Sentenced at first instance, in 2013, to seven years in prison and a sentence ofineligibility for life for incitement to prostitution of a minor, Silvio Berlusconi was acquitted in July 2014 by the Court of Appeal. The judges accept this time the argument defense attorneys that their client did not know Ruby’s age. This acquittal was definitively confirmed in March 2015 by the Court of Cassation in this aspect.
Convinced that the billionaire has bought the silence of many young women about these evenings, the magistrates are however opening new investigations for bribery and corruption of witnesses and false testimonies. They also end in three acquittals, in 2021 in Siena, in 2022 in Rome and in February 2023 in Milan. In this last trial, dubbed “Ruby-ter”, the prosecution had demanded six years in prison against the octogenarian senator and described Silvio Berlusconi as a “sultan” who used to“animate his evenings with a group of concubines, in the sense of sexual slaves, who entertained him for remuneration”. But the judges could not retain the facts of corruption. “Finally acquitted after more than 11 years of untold suffering, infamy and political damage”reacted the person concerned.
The lawsuit for tax evasion linked to Mediaset
The only final condemnation received by “the Cayman” is linked to a case of tax evasion. Silvio Berlusconi is then accused of having used his audiovisual empire Mediaset to buy back the “inflated” broadcasting rights of films, acquired beforehand by screen companies which belong to him. The group has built up slush funds abroad and reduced its profits in Italy in order to pay less tax. in October 2012, the prosecutor claims that the costs of acquiring the films by Mediaset were“inflated” EUR 285 million for the period 1994-1998 alone, while for the years 2001-2003 this figure would have been EUR 40 million.
Silvio Berlusconi was sentenced to four years in prison but saw his sentence immediately reduced to one year, under an amnesty law enacted in 2006 to reduce prison overcrowding. A decision confirmed on appeal and then in cassation in 2013. His year of detention is transformed into community service, carried out in the Milan region in a retirement home for the elderly with Alzheimer’s disease, as Rai recalls.
Regarding the ineligibility sentence, set at five years in the first instance, the Court of Cassation returns the ball to the Court of Appeal, which reduces this sanction to two years. In November 2013, the Senate voted for the exclusion of Silvio Berlusconi, because of this final condemnation in the Mediaset affair. He is stripped of his mandate as a senator – he will recover it in 2022. “I have never been involved in a tax evasion system. There are no false invoices in the history of Mediaset”he had reacted after the decision of the Court of Cassation, saying to himself “persecuted by magistrates” Since twenty years.
The case of Unipol’s takeover of the BNL bank
That same year, 2013, Silvio Berlusconi was sentenced to one year in prison for violating the secrecy of the investigation in another case. As the Reuters news agency recalled at the time, the politician and entrepreneur was judged for transmitting confidential information to a newspaper owned by his brother about an investigation into an attempted takeover of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) by the insurer Unipol, in 2005. The Italian daily Il Giornale had published the details of a telephone conversation between the centre-left politician Piero Fassino and the ex-boss of Unipol about this case. This conversation had been taped.
Silvio Berlusconi and his brother were finally released on appeal in March 2014, the facts being prescribed.
The case of bribes paid to a senator
New conviction, in 2015, for Silvio Berlusconi. He is this time prosecuted for having paid a bribe of three million euros to a senator. In 2006, after narrowly won legislative elections, the President of the Council, Romano Prodi, had only a very narrow majority in the Senate. Only a few months after the vote, one of the left-wing coalition senators, Sergio De Gregorio, had changed sides and joined Silvio Berlusconi. A departure that had accelerated the fall of the government. Sergio De Gregorio admitted to the judges and the press that he had been paid.
But this sentence was still under appeal when it became statute-barred.
Investigations into his links with the mafia
Other court cases will close without him. Long suspected of links with the mafia, Silvio Berlusconi has indeed also been the subject of investigations into these allegations but they have never led to a trial. His friend and associate Marcello Dell’Utri, co-founder of his Forza Italia party, was instead imprisoned in the 2010s for playing the role of intermediary between Silvio Berlusconi and Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia, in the 1970s. .
According to the Court of Cassation, Marcello Dell’Utri had Silvio Berlusconi hire a member of Cosa Nostra to manage the stables of his sumptuous villa in Arcore, near Milan. Still according to the Court, the billionaire paid “large sums of money” over two decades to the Mafia to benefit from its protection.