![]() ![]() “The judges are fine for Berlusconi when they do what he wants,” said Roia, adding that his control of a media empire enables him to turn the public against his judicial enemies. Lawyers say Berlusconi has contributed to the problem by passing laws for his own protection, including drastically shortening the statute of limitations for white-collar crimes, which gives defence lawyers an incentive to drag out cases. Even minor offences like falsifying a bus ticket or driving without a licence are eligible for two appeals. A civil case takes on average more than seven years to settle and a criminal case five. ![]() There is a backlog of about 9 million cases. The system is notoriously Byzantine and subject to huge delays for both criminal and civil cases, the latter seen as a significant disincentive to foreign investment. Whether or not you buy Berlusconi’s line, there is widespread agreement that Italy’s judicial system is a mess. This has strong resonance for rightist voters who still bitterly remember Bribesville, especially the dozens of suicides of suspects and the way prosecutors threw people into jail to elicit a confession, which many judges now concede was an abuse. He still paints himself as an anti-communist warrior, more than 20 years after the Italian Communist Party was dissolved. Ironically, he owes his rise to Bribesville, because he filled the vacuum left by the Christian Democrats. In his address last week, Berlusconi called that probe the “abnormal action” of magistrates who had destroyed a political bulwark against communism to hand power to the left. The 1992-1994 “Bribesville” investigation into massive political graft swept away that old order, including the Christian Democrats. Nevertheless, the media mogul’s accusations strike a chord with many voters in a country where politics is still coloured by beliefs dating back to the Cold War, when for 50 years the Christian Democrat party ruled, and the most powerful communist party in the West was in permanent opposition. “Berlusconi has been judged by so many magistrates and more recently the supreme court that it is difficult to believe that all of them were biased in analysing these crimes,” he said. Berlusconi himself listed in 2008 a toll of 577 visits by police, 2,500 court hearings and 174 million euros he had paid in laywers’ bills. ![]() The five supreme court judges were politically conservative, and public prosecutor Antonello Mura has led the most right-wing magistrates’ association.ĭefence lawyer Markus Wiget said that while Berlusconi’s prominence might have made him a more tempting target, political bias could not explain all his legal difficulties. “You only have to think how many different magistrates judged him in so many different situations to say that from a statistical point of view it is impossible that they are all from the left,” said senior Milan judge Fabio Roia, member of a politically centrist magistrates’ association. Lawyers and judges give his accusations short shrift. “We must together wage this battle for democracy and freedom, to make Italy a country where people are not afraid of finding themselves in jail for no reason.” On Sunday, as the 76-year-old billionaire wept at a rally of his supporters in Rome, he returned to the theme. Much of the centre-right leader’s emotional video address after the sentence was a bitter attack on “uncontrollable” magistrates who had hounded him for 20 years for political ends. ![]() REUTERS/Alessandro BianchiĮver since he entered politics in 1994, the four-times prime minister has railed against the judges, and he rounded on them again last week after the supreme court confirmed a one-year jail term for tax fraud, his first definitive conviction in dozens of trials. Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi closes his eyes in a gesture to supporters during a rally to protest his tax fraud conviction, outside his palace in central Rome August 4, 2013. ![]()
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