THE MEDIA empire of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is at the centre of a major political row after Canale 5, one of three commercial TV channels owned by Mr Berlusconi, last week secretly filmed a judge who only days earlier had ruled against the prime minister’s Fininvest group.
Viewers of Mattino 5, a breakfast time programme on Canale 5, were treated to remarkably dull, but obviously clandestine, footage of Judge Raimondo Mesiano out for a morning stroll, a smoke and then a visit to the barber.
The commentary accompanying the images called the judge’s behaviour “eccentric”, referred to the fact that he was smoking his “umpteenth” cigarette and, horror of horrors, pointed out that he was wearing “strange” turquoise coloured socks.
Judge Mesiano just two weeks ago ruled against Mr Berlusconi, ordering his Fininvest group to pay €750 million in damages to rival CIR, as compensation for having bribed a judge in the early 1990s to ensure that it won a battle for control of the huge publishing house Mondadori.
In 2007, senator Cesare Previti, a one-time Berlusconi family lawyer, was given a definitive 18- month sentence for bribing appeals court judge Vittorio Metta in relation to the Mondadori takeover. In his recent sentence, Judge Mesiano also ruled that Mr Berlusconi was “co-responsible” for the bribery.
Commenting on that sentence on a news programme on Canale 5, the prime minister called Judge Mesiano a “very active, extreme left judge”. Later he said: “We’ll be hearing some nice ones about that judge.”
The TV item has prompted widespread condemnation. The CSM, the magistrates’ autonomous ruling body, expressed outrage, while Democratic Party (PD) leader Dario Franceschini argued that Judge Mesiano had simply done “his job as a judge”.
While attending a meeting in Chieti yesterday, Mr Franceschini wore turquoise socks by way of solidarity with Judge Mesiano.
Other commentators were even more outspoken, accusing the prime minister of “criminal” and menacing behaviour.
Former investigating magistrate Antonio Di Pietro of the Italy of Values party said yesterday: “I have denounced Berlusconi’s criminal methods forever, his attempts to denigrate political rivals . . .
“Once upon a time, we had Mafiosi who killed servants of the state, now we have people in high office, including the prime minister no less, who try to ‘morally kill off’ their rivals so as to hold on, unchallenged, to power.”
PD senator Michele Brambilla, writing in daily La Stampa, said: “The worst thing – the thing that really gives you the shivers – is the shadowing, the spying, the violation of privacy, the public pillorying, with the implied warning: ‘look, we’re watching you’.”
Although Claudio Brachino, the Canale 5 presenter, has apologised for the item, both he and other figures on the right have accused the centre-left of hypocrisy.
“Does the right to privacy apply only to magistrates? . . . What about normal citizens or the prime minister?” asked justice minister Angelino Alfano, in an apparent reference to a series of “poolside” photographs “stolen” by paparazzi at Mr Berlusconi’s private Sardinian residence and published this summer.
In recent weeks, Mr Berlusconi has suffered two serious judicial setbacks – first there was Judge Mesiano’s Lodo Mondadoria ruling, then days later, Italy’s constitutional court annulled legislation introduced by the Berlusconi government giving the prime minister immunity from prosecution.
In a reference to those judgments, the prime minister last week said that he wanted to change the constitution in order to take power away from “unelected” bodies such as the constitutional court and other courts.