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Italy court again postpones Berlusconi corruption trial

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] The corruption trial of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi resumed Friday but was immediately postponed to February 27. Judges for the tenth section of the Milan Tribunal postponed the trial as requested by Berlusconi's lawyers but refused their request to have earlier proceedings thrown out. Berlusconi is accused of paying his former lawyer David Mills as much as $600,000 to Mills to provide false testimony at two trials in 1997 and 1998 involving Berlusconi's broadcasting company, Mediaset. Berlusconi's trial was postponed so that Mills's final appeal of his conviction and sentence will be concluded. Berlusconi's lawyers argued that the the Mills case might affect his, and the statute of limitations has been frozen until a new date. This is the second time the corruption case against Berlusconi has been reopened and then delayed since a law granting him immunity from prosecution was thrown out by the Italian Constitutional Court in October. He is also facing a separate trial for tax fraud which was postponed in November until this month. Berlusconi has faced trial on at least six occasions involving charges of false accounting, tax fraud, money laundering, embezzlement, and giving false testimony. In October 2007, Berlusconi's April 2007 acquittal on bribery charges was upheld. In 2005, Berlusconi was acquitted of corruption charges despite testimony accusing him of giving kickbacks to the late Socialist premier Bettino Craxi.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on January 15, 2010 (boomark / email).