An Italian court has dropped a key corruption charge against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, invoking a statute of limitations that meant time had run out to press a conviction.
The ruling, read to a packed Milan court, implied that 68-year-old Mr Berlusconi was guilty as charged of complicity in bribing a Rome judge but could not be sentenced because of the time limit.
The court then fully acquitted Mr Berlusconi of a second charge of graft.
Mr Berlusconi, a billionaire media mogul and the first serving Italian prime minister to stand in a criminal trial, was accused of corrupting the Rome judiciary in the late 1980s and again in 1991 to win favourable rulings for his Fininvest company.
The prime minister always maintained his innocence and said he was the victim of a politically-motivated legal witchhunt.
State prosecutors said he had authorised massive bribes and had demanded an eight-year prison term. However, under Italian law, a court can accept "mitigating circumstances" for a defendant with a clean criminal record and halve the usual 15-year statute of limitations.
As the most recent charge dated back to 1991, Mr Berlusconi was automatically saved from a potentially devastating guilty verdict and prison term.