Berlusconi saved in graft trial

An Italian court dropped a key corruption charge against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Friday, invoking a statute of limitations that ...

An Italian court dropped a key corruption charge against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Friday, invoking a statute of limitations that meant time had run out to convict him of allegations he bribed a judge.

The ruling, read to a packed Milan court, implied that the 68-year-old Berlusconi was guilty of authorising aides to corrupt a Rome judge in 1991 but could not be sentenced because of the time limit. The court then acquitted Berlusconi of a second charge of graft, bringing the curtain down on a trial that lasted almost five years and had threatened to hobble his political career.

The twin rulings mean Berlusconi emerges from the case with a clean criminal record.

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Berlusconi, a billionaire media mogul and the first serving Italian PM to stand in a criminal trial, was accused of bribing the Rome judiciary in the late 1980s and again in 1991 to win favourable rulings for his Fininvest company. State prosecutors said he had authorised massive bribes and had demanded an 8-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, Berlusconi was automatically saved from a potentially devastating guilty verdict.

Berlusconi’s lawyer Gaetano Pecorella told reporters that the Prime Minister would appeal the verdict and seek a full acquittal in both counts of corruption.