Former newspaper editor and
ex-associate of three-time premier Silvio Berlusconi, Valter
Lavitola, on Thursday reached a plea bargain with the Naples
prosecutor's office for an eleven-month sentence on charges of
international corruption.
Lavitola implicitly admitted attempting to blackmail
Italian construction company Impregilo regarding alleged bribes
for Panamanian contracts.
According to prosecutors, he attempted to coerce Impregilo
to build a hospital in Panama by threatening, if it refused, to
have the Panamanian president make a negative declaration that
could have torpedoed Impregilo's stock price.
In a separate case, Lavitola was indicted with Berlusconi
last October for allegedly bribing former senator Sergio De
Gregorio to switch political sides from the centre left to the
centre right, a move that led to the collapse of Romano Prodi's
centre-left government in 2008.
Lavitola is accused of acting as a go-between for a bribe
that allegedly totaled two million euros.
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