After days of waiting, the decisive hours have finally arrived for Silvio Berlusconi. At 12 the judges of the Supreme Court meet in chambers and probably in the afternoon they will communicate the final verdict on the Mediaset trial, which in the first and second instances had seen the Cavaliere sentenced to four years' imprisonment for tax fraud (three of which were condoned by the pardon) and five disqualification from public office (but the pg asked to reduce them to three). In the meantime, by mid-morning, Mediaset's share on the Stock Exchange gained almost one and a half points.
Yesterday afternoon the final speech was staged by Niccolò Ghedini and Franco Coppi, Berlusconi's lawyers, who had presented over 40 objections to the Appeal sentence. “This Mediaset case is my nightmare – said Ghedini -. I have been defending Berlusconi for 16 years, perhaps there are too many”.
The trial concerns the sale of television and film rights with US companies for 470 million euros carried out by Mediaset through two offshore companies. The first and second instance proceedings confirmed the prosecutors' allegations: the American majors allegedly sold the rights to the two offshore companies, which then resold them with a significant price increase to Mediaset to circumvent the Italian tax authorities and create slush funds available to Berlusconi.
According to Coppi this system does not represent a tax fraud, but an abuse of law to evade the Italian tax and, as such, punishable only with administrative and tax penalties. For this reason, the lawyer asked the Cassation to cancel the appeal sentence. However, if the Cassation intended to attribute criminal relevance to the case, for Coppi the crime to be contested would not be fraud, but complicity in false invoicing, which provides for a lower penalty. For this reason, alternatively, the lawyer requested the postponement of the trial to another court of appeal to redefine the crime. But the prescription is upon us.
