THE MONDAY Trial, a live reality show that could be destined for a long run, was showing again yesterday in Milan, where Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi faced charges that he paid English lawyer David Mills a $600,000 (€420,000) bribe in return for “reticent” testimony during two major trials in the 90s involving Mr Berlusconi’s Fininvest Group.
Until yesterday, Mr Berlusconi had not attended any of the hearings relating to this trial. However, the prime minister’s change of tactics, his apparent determination to attend all four trials in which he is currently indicted, saw him in court yesterday for a trial he described as “unbelievable”.
Speaking to reporters during a break in the hearing, he launched a by now familiar tirade against the investigating judiciary, saying: “This is the worst of all my trials . . . it is ridiculous, paradoxical and unbelievable that the Italian state should spend so much money for a trial like this. There is no motive to it and no trace of the payment . . . From 103 investigations, these [Milan] public prosecutors have brought me to trial 24 times . . . and in none of these 24 trials did the judges find that the charges made by the public prosecutors were founded . . . they were merely trying to use the legal system as a weapon against someone they consider to be a political adversary.”
Mr Berlusconi went on to suggest that a parliamentary commission of inquiry should address the “cancer for democracy” represented by a politicised judiciary. With specific reference to the “Mills” trial, the prime minister supplied reporters with copies of an interview he gave two years ago to TV journalist (and sympathiser) Bruno Vespa, in which he declared that David Mills was “one of many lawyers occasionally used outside Italy by Fininvest. I do not recall ever having met him.”
In February last year, an appeals court quashed a 4½-year sentence handed down to Mr Mills, estranged husband of former Labour minister Teresa Jowell, for corruption in the 1997 and 1998 All Iberian and Guardia Di Finanza trials, not because it judged the charges unfounded but rather because the statute of limitations had kicked in: more than 10 years had passed since the original “crime” was committed.
When Mr Berlusconi speaks of his “24” trials that concluded without a conviction, he omits to say that many of these trials did not end in acquittals, rather they were quashed by the same statute.