[A-List] Italy: Berlusconi victory

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

Berlusconi enjoys double success over critics
AP
The Independent, 06 November 2002

Silvio Berlusconi scored two political victories yesterday, acquitted in a
false bookkeeping case and winning parliamentary approval for a bill critics
say will help him and his allies in a corruption trial.

In the criminal case, a panel of judges in Milan cleared Berlusconi after
the statute of limitations ran out on charges concerning the 1992 transfer
of a football player.

The acquittal was based on a new law, passed earlier this year by
Berlusconi's conservative forces in parliament, that partially
decriminalised false bookkeeping and reduced its statute of limitations.

Also on Tuesday, Parliament gave its final approval to a bill that the
center-left opposition says is designed to help the premier and his allies
in a separate corruption trial in Milan.

The new legislation - approved by the lower Chamber of Deputies with a 310-4
vote and one abstention - allows defendants to seek new trial venues if they
have a "legitimate suspicion" that judges are biased against them.

Berlusconi and Cesare Previti, a lawmaker in the premier's Forza Italia
party and close associated of the premier, on trial in Milan on charges they
bribed judges who were ruling on the sale of a state-owned food company in
the mid-1980s.

The two deny any wrongdoing. They have asked for their trials to be moved
from Milan, arguing they cannot get a fair hearing because of the judges'
alleged leftist leanings.

The conservatives insist the "legitimate suspicion" law ensures defendants a
fair trial with independent judges.

Berlusconi has long claimed he is the victim of a political vendetta. His
convictions have been reversed on appeal or annulled due to the statute of
limitations.

In the case decided on Tuesday, prosecutors in Milan had accused Berlusconi
of falsifying the books of his soccer club AC Milan when registering the
transfer of Gianluigi Lentini from Serie A club Torino.