Berlusconi gets a year in jail for tax fraud

[admin]

SCANNER ON PMs, PAST & PRESENT
Berlusconi gets a year in jail for tax fraud

Milan: A court in Milan on Friday convicted former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi of tax fraud and sentenced the media mogul to four years in prison, his first jail sentence in years of criminal probes. The court, however, almost immediately cut the term to one year, applying a 2006 amnesty law aimed at reducing prison crowding.
The 76-year-old billionaire businessman, who called the sentence “intolerable judicial harassment”, is expected to remain free until the appeals process is exhausted. In Italy, cases must pass two levels of appeal before the verdicts are final.
Berlusconi received a suspended sentence in 1997 for false bookkeeping, but that conviction was reversed on appeal. Other criminal investigations against him on charges including corruption had ended in acquittal or were thrown out for statute of limitations.
For nearly 20 years, Berlusconi has dominated the Italian political scene, but his star began to lose its glitter after a sex scandal that pushed him into another trial in the same courthouse, and amid the European debt crisis that effectively forced him out of office last November. AGENCIES IN THE DOCK
Court convicts Berlusconi of tax fraud over purchase of broadcasting rights by his Mediaset TV company.
Berlusconi has 2 appeals
Court’s written ruling says Berlusconi showed a ‘natural capacity for crime’. Berlusconi terms verdict ‘intolerable judicial harassment’ Verdict incredible, say Berlo lawyers
Earlier in the week, Berlusconi had announced he wouldn’t run for a fourth term, leaving his centre right party under pressure to find another charismatic figure before next spring’s election.
Berlusconi wasn’t in the courtroom. In a statement, his lawyers denounced the verdict as “absolutely incredible”, and said they would appeal. Berlusconi’s designated political heir as the head of the centre-right party he leads, Angelino Alfano, blasted the verdict as “incomprehensible” and said he is confident an appeals court would throw out the conviction.
In this, and other cases against him, Berlusconi has described himself as the innocent victim of prosecutors he contends sympathize with the left.
Berlusconi, along with other defendants convicted in the case, must deposit a total of €10 million ($13 million) into a court-ordered fund. The appeals could take years to proceed.
Prosecutors alleged that the defendants were behind a scheme to purchase the rights to broadcast US movies on Berlusconi’s private TV networks in his Mediaset empire through a series of offshore companies and had falsely declared the payments to avoid taxes.
A total of 11 people were on trial.
Three were acquitted, including a close associate of Berlusconi, Fedele Confalonieri, chairman of Mediaset. Berlusconi and three others were convicted, including a Hollywood producer, Frank Agrama, who received a three-year sentence. AGENCIES