DPA/Reuters/Rome

A verdict in the final appeal of the tax fraud conviction against former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is expected from Italy’s highest court today, Italian media reported.
Berlusconi’s lawyers were presenting the case for an acquittal on the second day of proceedings at the Court of Cassation in Rome.
“The discussions can start today and we can then adjourn to tomorrow,” presiding judge Antonio Esposito said yesterday.
The five judges must decide whether to uphold the verdict, return the case to a lower court or acquit Berlusconi.
Berlusconi was sentenced in October to four years in prison – likely to be cut to one year under an 2006 amnesty law – and a five-year ban on holding public office for fraudulent offshore accounting by his family’s media firm, Mediaset.
If the Court of Cassation confirms the verdict, it would be the 76-year-old politician and tycoon’s first criminal conviction to be upheld out of more than 30 judicial proceedings he has faced.
Prosecutor Antonello Mura on Tuesday called for the court to confirm Berlusconi’s conviction, but to reduce the ban on holding office to three years.
Berlusconi was the “deciding head” in a systematic fraud, Mura said.
Berlusconi’s centre-right political alliance reacted with cautious optimism to the prosecutor’s call to reduce the ban, which defence lawyer Coppi had called a “manifest error”.
Berlusconi himself did not appear in court.
If the guilty verdict is again upheld, it could threaten the fragile government of crisis-ridden Italy.
Berlusconi’s centre-right People of Freedom party is the most important partner in a grand coalition with the Democratic Party of Prime Minister Enrico Letta.
Should the court uphold the ban on public office, it would be put to the Italian Senate for approval. Berlusconi is himself a senator, and would be forced to leave office if the ban were upheld.
In Italy, verdicts can be appealed twice before they are enforced. Berlusconi’s conviction was upheld on first appeal in May.
On several occasions in previous legal cases, Berlusconi was not prosecuted because the statute of limitations had expired or because, under his governments, laws were passed making it more difficult to prosecute him.
The media tycoon says he has been persecuted by leftist judges ever since he entered politics in 1994, but if he loses the supreme court case it will be his first definitive conviction in at least two dozen trials.
Because of his age, the jail sentence would be served through community service or house arrest and followers say he would continue to run his People of Freedom party, which he founded and bankrolls and which has no clear alternative leader.
But the power and campaigning skills which have enabled him to dominate Italian politics for 20 years, since the so-called Bribesville graft investigation wiped out the old political order, would be severely curtailed.
There is speculation that Berlusconi’s oldest daughter, Marina, 46 and chairwoman of his Fininvest holding company, would become the party’s public figurehead if he is convicted.
Berlusconi’s most hawkish supporters have threatened a mass desertion of the government and parliament and blocking of Italy’s motorways with public demonstrations if he is convicted.
But a greater threat to the government could come from Letta’s party, which is torn by a leadership struggle. Many of the party’s members are already deeply uneasy about being in coalition with Berlusconi and could rebel if he is found guilty.
Politicians from all sides are waiting in anxious anticipation for the verdict, with uncertainty over Berlusconi’s fate adding to inertia which has prevented Letta’s fractious government from passing urgently needed economic reforms.
“The eve of the supreme court decision is accompanied by a strange silence. It is as if suddenly politics is holding its breath in anticipation of the sentence on Silvio Berlusconi,” said political commentator Massimo Franco.
Berlusconi has repeatedly said that he will not bring down the government even if convicted, but has raised doubts about whether the PD would remain loyal.
However, the former cruise ship crooner is a mercurial figure and his reaction to a guilty verdict is unpredictable.
Even if Berlusconi is convicted definitively, it could take his peers in the Senate until at least September to vote for his ejection from parliament.
The supreme court decision is not Berlusconi’s only legal headache. He is also appealing in a lower court against a seven-year jail sentence in June for abuse of office and paying for sex with Moroccan-born nightclub dancer Karima El Mahroug, alias “Ruby the Heartstealer”, when she was underage.