Former premier and
centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi got some more good news on
the legal front Tuesday when his huge alimony settlement to his
estranged wife was cut significantly.
It was the second fillip for Berlusconi in two months,
after his conviction for having sex with an alleged underaged
prostitute was quashed.
But he is still visiting Alheimer's patients periodically
as part of a definitive one-year conviction for tax-fraud.
On Tuesday Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported
that a Milan appeals court had ruled in favour of Berlusconi and
against his former wife in an alimony dispute case, cutting
Veronica Lario's monthly support payments and ordering her to
repay 36 million euros.
Berlusconi, one of Italy's richest men, had initially been
ordered to pay Lario three million euros per month in alimony,
but that has been reduced to a two-million euro monthly payment,
reported Corriere della Sera.
The Court of Appeal of Milan also made the order
retroactive, thus requiring Lario, who had been married to
Berlusconi for more than 20 years, to repay the one million euro
difference for each of the previous 36 months.
She can appeal the latest decision to Italy's top Cassation
Court.
Berlusconi had asked the appeals court to cut Lario's
alimony from an initial award of three million per month set in
December 2012. A separate court ruling had suggested payment
should be 1.6 million euros monthly.
The couple's divorce was officially finalized in February,
leaving Berlusconi,77, free to marry his 29-year-old fiance
Francesca Pascale, a former shop assistance from Naples.
Their wedding would be the third trip to the altar for
Berlusconi who, with Pascale, is a regular on Italian TV and in
Berlusconi-owned gossip mags where they project a cozy image of
a besotted couple, often petting their dog, Dudu', who has
become a celebrity in his own right.
Berlusconi has been married twice and has five children,
three of those with Lario, 58, a former actress.
He married her in 1990 after being smitten several years
previously when he saw her perform topless in a Milan play about
a philandering husband called The Magnificent Cuckold.
Lario, who was born Miriam Raffaela Bartolini, completed
her divorce from Berlusconi on February 17 after keeping out of
the limelight since denouncing her then husband's eye for the
girls in 2009, claiming "maidens are being fed to the dragon".
Separately Tuesday, judicial sources said Berlusconi's
divorce would be finalised by the end of the year.
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