Rome, Sep. 18 (ANI): Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi would be forced to resign if laws providing him immunity are overturned by the Constitutional Court next month, his lawyers have admitted.
“If the Constitutional Court, which begins its deliberations on October 6, overturns the law there would be damage to the functions of an elected official, which could not be carried out”, Times Online quoted Glauco Nori, a state lawyer for the prime minister’s office, as saying.
The move could cause “irreparable damage” and lead to the Prime Minister’s resignation, he added.
After coming to power for the third time in 2008, Berlusconi pushed the law through Parliament, which gives immunity to the offices of Prime Minister, President and the Speakers of both houses of parliament from court trials, which was dubbed
As being “tailor-made” to shield Berlusconi from corruption charges, by the opposition, the report said.
At the time when legislation was passed, Berlusconi was being prosecuted for allegedly giving a 600,000-dollar bribe to British lawyer David Mills to provide false testimony on his behalf in corruption trials in the 1990s, it added.
Berlusconi’s trial was suspended but Mills was sentenced to 41/2 years in jail.
According to the report, the Milan prosecutor’s office had recently submitted its own memorandum to the court, challenging the immunity law as violating the principle that all citizens are equal before the law.
If the immunity law is struck off next month, corruption charges against Berlusconi are likely to be revived.
According to reports, magistrates in Milan and Palermo are also investigating Berlusconi’s suspected links to the Mafia in the 1990s. (ANI)
‘The spectre of blackmail hangs over Berlusconi’
London, June 20 (ANI): Silvio Berlusconi is so badly stuck in the labyrinth of controversies that he has become “blackmailable”, says a leading Italian daily newspaper.
“The spectre of blackmail hangs over Berlusconi,” said La Stampa.
Giampiero Mughini, a right-wing commentator, said: “A Prime Minister who is so blackmailable is a problem for the country.”
Meanwhile, the scandal surrounding the Italian Prime Minister over his extramarital affairs has just got sleazier, reports The Times.
A showgirl has claimed she and a number of other women were paid by the prime minister to attend his private parties.
In the Italian newspaper Corierre Della Sera, 42-year-old Patrizia D’Addario claims she has evidence, pictures allegedly showing Berlusconi’s bedroom as well as secretly recorded video and audio tapes of their encounters.
The news adds to the list of Berlusconi’s “friendships” with various women, including most recently, teenaged model Noemi Letizia.
Letizia’s name first appeared in the Italian press when Berlusconi’s wife sent an open letter to an Italian newspaper criticizing her husband’s choice of female candidates for the upcoming European elections as unqualified.
She also bitterly complained that he had attended Letizia’s 18th birthday party in Naples while he never bothered to attend those of his own children. (ANI)