(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 18 - Former centre-right Rome mayor Gianni Alemanno got a suspended sentence of one year and 10 months in jail Friday for influence peddling and illegal party funding in one branch of the sprawling political-business racketeering case in the Italian capital dubbed 'Mondo di Mezzo ('Middle World').
    Alemanno, who will be 64 next month, is former hard right politician who was Rome mayor for Silvio Berlusconi's now-defunct centre-right People of Freedom party from 2008 to 2013.
    He voiced "bitterness over an unjust sentence" and said he would appeal to the supreme court, which had sent the case back to the second appeals level after quashing a former acquittal of the former official.
    In March last year former rightist NAR militant and ex-gangster Massimo Carminati was given a 10-year term in the second appeals trial in the massive Rome corruption case while fellow ringleader and former leftwing cooperatives kingpin and well-connected political operator Salvatore Buzzi got 12 years, 10 months.
    The case was initially dubbed 'Mafia Capitale' because prosecutors said the affair, in which a gang got its hands on city contracts worth millions, ranging from the running of Roma and migrant camps to waste management and maintaining green areas, regarded organized crime.
    But the supreme Cassation Court quashed mafia convictions in 2019 and ordered an appeals court to reset jail terms in the case.
    Carminati and Buzzi were given terms of 14 years and 18 years, four month in the first appeal trial.
    Buzzi and Carminati were released from house arrest and jail respectively in summer 2020 after a judge ruled that the maximum amount of time they could be deprived of their freedom before a definitive verdict on their case had run out.
    'Middle World' refers to Carminati's nickname for the demi-monde of politicians, white-collar workers and criminals he operated in. (ANSA).