The Senate on Thursday accepted the
resignation of centre-right Forza Italia (FI) Senator Augusto
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 has 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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