Berlusconi firm fined 560 mn euros in bribery appeal

A Milan court ordered Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest company Saturday to pay rival media group CIR 560 million euros after it bribed a judge to approve a company takeover. The Milan appeals court reduced by a quarter the original 750-million-euro ($1-billion) damages claim that a civil court had ordered the holding company to pay in October 2009, the ANSA news agency reported. This was compensation for Fininvest wresting control of the leading Mondadori publishing house from Compagnie Industriali Riunite (CIR) in 1990. A judge ruled in 2009 that Berlusconi was "co-responsible" for the bribery of a judge who decided in favour of Fininvest in the takeover battle. The judge was convicted of corruption in 2007 and sentenced to two years and nine months in prison, while the Fininvest lawyer who bribed him was given a sentence of one year and six months. CIR, whose honorary president is Berlusconi rival Carlo de Benedetti, controlled the newsweekly L'Espresso and the left-leaning daily newspaper La Repubblica, both avid chroniclers of the sex scandals that have been dogging the Italian premier. In an appeal by Fininvest, judges on Saturday adjusted the fine and ruled that the damages incurred by CIR amounted to 540 million euros as of the date of the initial judgment, and a total 560 million (800 million dollars) with interest. "Our advocates are looking into a further appeal," the prime minister's daughter and Fininvest president Marina Berlusconi said after the ruling. "We are convinced we are in the right, we will not let ourselves be intimidated," she said while denouncing the damages figure as "double the value of Fininvest's stake in Mondadori". The fine was payable immediately, the judges said. "It's a hard blow for Fininvest, financially and economically, as the sentence recognises the group's responsibility for corruption," said Franco Pavoncello. The ruling also represents a major setback for Berlusconi who on Tuesday withdrew a controversial law proposal to suspend all company fines above 10 million euros imposed by lower courts and over 20 million by appeals courts pending a final ruling by the country's highest court. The proposal, included at the last minute in an austerity plan as it was to go before parliament for debate, was widely criticised as a bid to shield Fininvest from paying any fine the appeals judges may impose. He defended the proposed amendment as a means of protecting companies from financial troubles caused by "erroneous" court judgments, and said workers in companies that flounder under such fines should blame opposition parties for their "shameful" resistance to the now cancelled measure. Analysts said Saturday that Berlusconi would survive politically in the short term, but that he had no political future as he himself had announced this week that he would not run again in 2013 elections. "Neither Berlusconi nor (his Northern League ally) Bossi has a future in the long-term, so they are not worried about what will happen in 2013, they continue to move ahead trying to gain time," said Franco Pavoncello, a political science professor at the American University of Rome, predicting a "status quo" in Italian politics. Political scientist Giacomo Marramao of Rome III university agreed, explaining that "the problem is there is no unity on the Italian left, which does not have a coherent line". Berlusconi is currently facing three trials, including one for allegedly paying to have sex with a Moroccan girl nicknamed "Ruby" when she was just 17 years old, and another for bribing a witness to lie about his business dealings. Berlusconi cannot be prosecuted in the Mondadori case, as the facts legally prescribed in 2001 -- meaning the window-period for legal action had expired.