[A-List] Italy: another Berlusconi scandal

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Phantom votes to save PM's lawyer

Hilary Clark reports from Rome as Berlusconi's 'piano players' get the bird
in multiple-voting and corruption scandal
The Sunday Herald, 27 October 2002

Legislation allegedly designed solely to keep Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi's former lawyer out of jail met an unexpected hitch after
senators of his ruling party were filmed voting on behalf of absent friends
as the bill went through the upper house.

Several senior members of the multi-billionaire's Forza Italia and the
far-right Alleanza Nazionale, dubbed the 'piano players', pressed the
electronic voting buttons not only of their own seats but of those of absent
colleagues next to their own. The official video footage catching them in
the act was passed to opposition politicians, who claim that between 26 and
50 phantom votes were cast in Thursday night's division, which the
government parties won. It is also thought the session may have been
inquorate.

Politicians to the left of the right-wing coalition say the Italian
constitution 'tacitly' requires MPs to be physically present to vote. 'This
time they have gone over the top,' said opposition senator Willer Bordon,
who says the opposition could now appeal to the Constitutional Court. The
leader of the house, Marcello Pera -- a member of Forza Italia -- denied any
wrongdoing in a brief note to the press.

The centre-left opposition boycotted the vote in protest against the new
law, which would enable the defendant in a court case to have the trial
moved to another court if he had a reasonable belief that the judge was
politically biased against him.

Opponents say the so-called Cerami Bill has been tailor-made to protect
former def ence minister Cesare Previti -- a Forza Italia MP and former
lawyer to Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest holding company -- from a long
prison sentence for corruption.

Berlusconi wants Previti's trial moved out of Milan, home of the
anti-corruption campaigns of the early 1990s, because, he claims,
prosecuting magistrate Ilda Boccassini is politically motivated.

Last week Boccassini, a veteran anti-mafia investig-ator and anti-corruption
campaigner, called for a 13-year prison sentence for Previti, the maximum
sentence for such charges, a demand she said was based on evidence 'that
weighs a ton'.

Previti and two other law yers, Attilio Pacifico and Giovanni Acampora, are
accused of receiving around Û33 million from the former owners of the oil
company SIR to bribe three Court of Cassation judges -- Renato Squillante,
one of the most senior judges in Rome, Filippo Verde and Vittorio Metta --
to allow the takeover of SIR by the public financial holding company IMI.
Under the judges' ruling, IMI was forced to pay the Rovelli family, the
heirs of SIR founder Nino Rovelli, a settlement of Û490m, a bill that
eventually went to the Italian taxpayer.

Previti has admitted to owning a sum of more than Û10m found in a Swiss bank
account, but he maintains it was not a bribe. It represents, he claims, fees
he had received from his Rovelli clients as a lawyer in the early 1970s,
which he had deposited in the Swiss bank to avoid paying Italian taxes on
it.

Silvio Berlusconi has been footing Previti's legal bills, the news-paper La
Repubblica has reported.

Last January the IMI-SIR case was bundled together with another
judge-bribing trial involving Fininvest. In the latter case Previti is
accused of having bribed judges in order that Fininvest could win control of
Italy's biggest publishing house, Mon dadori, in 1991. Berlusconi was able
to avoid appearing at this trial because the period within which the case
should have been filed by state prosecutors had expired.

Indeed, according to Boccassini, Previti and his associates ran a bribery
operation upon the High Court that amounted to 'a military-style
organisation', a charge which has led another group of MPs close to
Berlusconi to call to have her disciplined and taken off the case for
disrespect.

If the Cerami law, otherwise known as the 'Save Previti law', should be
passed, the case would probably be moved to another court where the judge
would be more sympathetic to Previti, or it could be thrown out of court
altogether.

Public opposition to the Cerami law has been vociferous and emotional. It
was the subject of a 400,000-strong demonstration in Rome last month, led by
the film-maker Nanni Moretti.