AFP/Rome

Berlusconi: not enough evidence against him
An attempt by Rome prosecutors to launch a trial against former premier Silvio Berlusconi and eleven others for tax evasion failed yesterday, after a judge said the case lacked evidence and had expired.
The prosecutors had requested in February that Berlusconi be tried for tax fraud relating to transactions made in 2003 and 2004 by Mediatrade-RTI, a subsidiary of the media magnate’s Mediaset company.
Mediatrade-RTI was accused of artificially inflating broadcasting rights for films before selling them on to Mediaset, and the prosecutors had called for deputy chairman Pier Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister’s son, to be tried as well.
But Rome judge Pierluigi Balestrieri said the statute of limitations applied to the allegations concerning 2003 transactions, while the accusations dating to 2004 did not have enough evidence supporting them to warrant a trial.
“The umpteenth judicial theorum against Berlusconi has been demolished,” said Antonio Leone, vice-president of Italy’s Chamber of Deputies and a member of the People of Freedom party, which was founded by Berlusconi.
Berlusconi, who is currently on trial for having sex with Moroccan nightclub dancer Karima El-Mahroug when she was just 17, had protested furiously against the prosecutors’ charges, insisting he was the victim of “judicial persecution”.
Charges against Berlusconi for tax fraud in a parallel trial in Milan were dropped in October last year after a preliminary hearings judge decided there was not enough evidence.
Despite being convicted several times of corruption and fraud in the past, all cases against Berlusconi have either been overturned or discarded when they expire after years of moving laboriously through Italy’s justice system.
It was always unlikely that Berlusconi, 75, would end up behind bars even if the trial had gone ahead and he had been found guilty, because Italy’s sentencing guidelines are very lenient for those aged 70 or older.