Berlusconi Faces Indictment over Phone Taps

PM could go on trial with brother over Fassino tape

MILAN – Investigating magistrate Stefania Donadeo has rejected the application for dismissal of the case against the prime minister’s put forward by the Milan public prosecutor’s office on 16 December. Ms Donadeo has ruled that Silvio Berlusconi – prime minister today as he was at the end of December 2005 – should go on trial with his brother Paolo Berlusconi. The publisher of Il Giornale was indicted three months ago on charges of leaking information that experts on voting behaviour say shifted a large number of votes, making a crucial contribution to the Centre-right’s fightback in the 2006 general election. On 31 December 2005, Il Giornale published a tapped conversation in which Democrats of the Left (DS) secretary Piero Fassino, who was not under investigation, jokingly asked UNIPOL CEO Giovanni Consorte: “Have we got a bank, then?” At the time, Mr Consorte was attempting to gain control of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, a takeover that was later stymied by the Milan market-rigging investigation.

THE STORY – The phone call, tapped on 17 July, was still confidential in December 2005. It had not yet been acquired in the case file – it would be included only several months later – and it had been neither transcribed nor even summarised in draft. There was only an audio file on the computers of the financial police, of the Milan prosecutors working on the Antonveneta/UNIPOL investigation and of the privately owned Research Control System company, which had carried out the environmental eavesdropping in the summer on behalf of the public prosecutor’s office. Research Control System’s then CEO, Roberto Raffaelli, who had long denied the fact, admitted removing a computer with the audio file in the summer and taking it to Silvio and Paolo Berlusconi. The meeting was organised by Paolo’s former business associate, Fabrizio Ravata, at Arcore at 7 pm on Christmas Eve 2005. At the preliminary hearing on 10 June this year, Mr Raffaelli received a 20-month sentence following a plea bargain. Mr Favata was given a 28-month sentence and ordered to pay Mr Fassino €40,000 in moral damages. Paolo Berlusconi was committed for trial. Ms Donadeo also held a special hearing to examine the public prosecutors’ request for dismissal of the case against the prime minister, reserving judgement. Her decision is now known. She has turned down the request and ordered the public prosecutor’s officer to apply to another investigating magistrate for the indictment of Mr Berlusconi on charges of abetting the disclosure of confidential information.

BELPIETRO – Apart from rejecting the prosecutors’ request for dismissal and ordering prosecutors to apply for Mr Berlusconi’s indictment, the investigating magistrate also ordered the public prosecutor’s office to enter the name of Maurizio Belpietro in the register of persons under investigation on the same charge of abetting the disclosure of confidential information. Mr Belpietro was editor of Il Giornale when it published the confidential recording delivered to Arcore and the Berlusconi brothers by the man who was tapping phones for the public prosecutor’s office.

Luigi Ferrarella
15 settembre 2011© all rights reserved - unauthorized reproduction forbidden

English translation by Giles Watson

www.watson.it

Article in Italian