ITALY: Just 24 hours after appearing to win a significant courtroom victory with his partial acquittal in the SME-judge bribery case in Milan, Italian Prime Minister Mr Silvio Berlusconi suffered a setback on Saturday when a Palermo court gave a nine-year prison sentence for Mafia collusion to his lifelong ally and business associate, Forza Italia senator Marcello Dell'Utri.
The state prosecution had charged that between the early 1970s and 1995 Dell'Utri served as "Cosa Nostra's ambassador within the Fininvest Group", alleging that he functioned as "a channel of communication between Cosa Nostra, the Milan business community and the institutions of the state".
The ruling came at the end of a controversial seven-year trial, in which several Mafiosi-turned-state's witness testified that via his friendship with Mafia boss, Gaetano Cinà, Dell'Utri had functioned as an intermediary between Cosa Nostra and Italy's business classes. Those same witnesses also alleged that between 1975 and 1983, about $57 million of Mafia money was laundered through Fininvest accounts. Cinà, who was charged with Mafia membership along with Dell'Utri, received a seven-year prison sentence on Saturday.
Mr Berlusconi had also been summonsed to testify at the trial but availed of the right to decline to give evidence. Furthermore, during the trial, it emerged that it had been Dell'Utri who had hired mafioso, Vittorio Mangano, as a "groom" to serve at Mr Berlusconi's private estate of Arcore, near Milan in the 70s.
The prosecution also alleged that Dell'Utri had intervened with the Mafia in order to obtain electoral support. At the 2001 general election, Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia party won all 61 single seat constituencies (41 lower house, 20 senate).
It could, however, be a very long time before Dell'Utri serves his prison sentence since, under Italy's sluggish legal system, the verdict becomes "definitive" only if upheld by two subsequent Appeals Courts, in a procedure that can take years.
As with Friday evening's SME ruling, so too did Saturday's guilty verdict prompt sharply contrasting reactions. While Mr Berlusconi offered no comment, Dell'Utri suggested that he was the victim of a political witch-hunt, orchestrated because of his close links with Mr Berlusconi, saying: "Life continues. I will wait for a more just verdict.
"Justice has other moments and in the end I'll find a judge who will believe in the defence's case.
"It's strange that all this [the accusation of Mafia collusion] started up at the very moment that I was founding a new party along with Berlusconi. What is for sure is that I would not be in the firing line now, if I had minded my own business."
Prosecuting magistrate Mr Antonio Ingroia inevitably gave a very different reading to the guilty verdict, commenting: "It's absolutely obvious that this is a verdict which upholds the validity of the prosecution's case and, in so doing, blows away all those insults that we've been subject to for the last seven years."
Mr Sandro Bondi, co-ordinator of the Forza Italia party, said: "I'm absolutely certain that he [ Dell'Utri] is innocent and completely extraneous to all the accusations that have been levelled against him and I'm sure that the appeals process will bear this out".