Carboni convicted in P3 case, Verdini acquitted

(ANSA) - Rome, March 16 - Veteran Sardinian wheeler-dealer and businessman Flavio Carboni was convicted of forming part of a secret association in the P3 influence-peddling case on Friday. Carboni, 86, was sentenced to six years and six months in jail in the case, a sentence he is unlikely to spend behind bars because of his age.
    Former centre-right and then centrist Senator Denis Verdini was acquitted of being a member of a secret association but was sentenced to one year and three months, a suspended sentence, for illegal party funding and ordered to pay a fine of 600,000 euros.
    Businessman Arcangelo Martino was sentenced to four years and nine months for violating the Anselmi Law banning subversive groups.
    In all, eight people were convicted.
    Former economy undersecretary Nicola Cosentino got a suspended 10 month term for defamation and private violence; and former Cassation Court president Vincenzo Carbone got two years, also suspended, for abuse of office.
    The cases of other defendants including former Sardinia governor Ugo Cappellacci timed out.
    Cappellacci, the regional chief of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, had been accused of embezzlement and abuse of office in connection with the Sardinian wind-farm industry. Tax lawyer Pasquale Lombardi was accused of secret association but died on March 2.
    In November 2016 Rome prosecutors requested 18 convictions in the trial into the so-called P3, a secret cabal that sought to exert undue influence on the State.
    Defendants included Verdini, formerly a close aide of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi who later supported the left-right government of Premier Matteo Renzi on some reforms.
    Prosecutors requested nine years six months for Carboni, eight years six months for ex-tax judge Lombardi and businessman Arcangelo Martino, five years for former Cassation judge Carbone, and four years for Verdini.
    They also requested one year six months for Cosentino, a former economy undersecretary from Berlusconi's now-defunct People of Freedom (PdL) party, and a one-year sentence for ex-Sardinia governor Cappellacci for abuse of office.
    Cosentino - who was elected MP four times between 1996-2008 as a member of the PdL - in June 2016 was found guilty of corrupting a prison guard.
    Cosentino was also involved in the so-called Eco4 trial on alleged Camorra infiltration into Caserta-area consortiums.
    He was arrested in April 2014 along with 12 others for alleged extortion and unfair competition in favor of his family petrol-pump business in the southern Campania region.
    Also on his rap sheet is a March 2013 arrest on suspicion of collusion with the powerful Casalesi clan of the Neapolitan Camorra mafia, whose death threats have forced anti-mafia writer Roberto Saviano into 24-hour police protection.
    Also risking prison sentences, but evenbtually acquitted, were: frontwoman Antonella Pau (three years), consortium president Pinello Cossu and businessman Alessandro Fornari (two years), businessman Fabio Porcellini (one year six months), former regional cabinet member and current Pontecagnano Mayor Ernesto Sica (one year six months), Massimo Parisi, a former Tuscany regional coordinator for Berlusconi's current Forza Italia (FI) party (one year), Sardinia Regional Environmental Protection Authority (ARPA) president Ignazio Farris (one year), the legal representative of a company called Ste Srl, Pierluigi Picerno (one year), and frontpeople Giuseppe Tomassetti and Maria Laura Scanu Concas (one year).
    Prosecutors also requested the director of UniCredit bank in the Sardinia city of Iglesias, Stefano Porcu, be fined 10,000 euros. Like the others, he was acquitted.
    Former senator Marcello Dell'Utri, once among Berlusconi's closest aides, is on trial for criminal association and violating a 1982 law against secret associations - the so-called Anselmi law - in separate proceedings in the same case.
    Dell'Utri is currently serving seven years for colluding with the mafia.