Assistant prosecutor-general Simona Di Monte said on Tuesday that the responsibility of former premier Silvio Berlusconi and his former aide Valter Lavitola in a Senator-bribing case should be confirmed while the statute of limitations should be declared.
Berlusconi and Lavitola were sentenced to three years in prison in 2015, at the end of their first-instance trial for bribing a former Senator to switch sides and topple the centre-left government of Romano Prodi in 2008.
The appeal process is now underway, but the statute of limitations has expired, so in any case Berlusconi and Lavitola will not serve their sentences.
Berlusconi and journalist and wheeler-dealer Lavitola, the former director of the Avanti! newspaper, were indicted in 2013 on charges of acting as a go-between in the case of Sergio De Gregorio, who confessed to switching sides after receiving two million euros from the centre-right leader during a centre-left government led by Prodi, who beat Berlusconi in two general elections.
De Gregorio testified that he and Berlusconi had "adopted a strategy of urban warfare to devastate" Prodi's shaky centre-left 2006-2008 coalition government in what he called 'Operation Freedom' - a term allegedly coined by Berlusconi.
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