Former Forza Italia (FI) Senator
Augusto Minzolini was entrusted Friday to the social services to
serve out a two-and-a-half-year sentence for embezzlement in the
use of his former RAI State broadcaster credit card.
Minzolini will do the social work at the Sant'Egidio Catholic
charity in Rome, his lawyer said.
Yesterday the Senate accepted the resignation of Minzolini
with 142 ayes, 105 nays and four abstentions.
Minzolini, a prominent member of ex-premier Silvio
Berlusconi's FI party, handed in his resignation as a lawmaker
to the Senate on March 28.
The Upper House had been deliberating since then on whether
to accept it.
Minzolini announced he would quit last month even though the
Senate had saved him from ejection under a 2012 law mandating an
office ban in the wake of a definitive conviction.
The Senate immunity panel had approved the ejection because
he was definitively convicted by the supreme Cassation Court of
embezzlement over the use of his RAI State broadcaster credit
card in 2015.
Minzolini, a friend of FI chief Berlusconi, is the former
editor of RAI's flagship news show TG1.
After tendering his resignation, Minzolini said: "I did this
because I wanted to and not because other people asked me to.
"Now I want to get back to being a journalist".
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