Corona jail term halved to 6 mts (4)

(ANSA) - Milan, September 21 - A Milan appeals court in Friday halved, from a year to six months, the jail term of former VIP photographer and 'paparazzi king' Fabrizio Corona for hiding 2.6 million euros.
    The money was found in 2016, part of it behind a false wall in the attic of his friend and aide Francesca Persi and another part in safety deposit boxes in Austria.
    Prosecutors had asked for a jail term of two years and nine months.
    On May 15 a surveillance judge ruled that could work again including using social networks after serving time for blackmailing clients.
    Judge Simone Luerti said Corona can again "carry out his working activities" and since "the advertising and media element is an essential component" of his "special activity", he will also be able "to use social networks" and give interviews but "not directly relating to the the therapeutic process in course".
    Corona left prison on February 21 and returned to a therapeutic community near Milan.
    The former VIP photographer was released by the same detention-review court that later ruled he could return to work.
    He went to the community at Limbiate.
    In January a Milan prosecutor asked a seized-assets board to confiscate Corona's home but give him back 1.8 million euros.
    In April, Corona got back some 1.9 million euros of a total of 2.6 million seized from him after being found in a ceiling and safety deposit boxes in Austria.
    His flat is in Via de Cristoforis, a stone's throw from Corso Como, the heart of the Milanese night scene.
    Corona has pled for the house to be left to him so he can sell it and raise some of the money he still owes.
    In June 2017 Corona was given the one-year jail term by a Milan court for the case concerning around 2.6 million euros in cash found hidden in a ceiling and in safety deposit boxes in Austria.
    Corona, a controversial figure, banged his fists on the table in celebration and shouted "justice is done" when the relatively lenient sentence was read out.
    Prosecutors had asked for a five-year term, but Corona was acquitted of two charges - false registration of assets and violation of asset regulations - and convicted only of fraudulent tax evasion.
    Corona's assistant, Francesca Persi, was given a three-month term.
    Corona was arrested in October 2017 while doing social work to serve the final part of a previous jail term for the fraudulent bankruptcy of his agency and for blackmailing VIPs with compromising photographs.
    In 2013, the photographer was sentenced to roughly five years in prison.
    The June 2017 ruling came just days after finance police seized the Milan apartment worth approximately 2.5 million euros investigators believe Corona bought through a dummy purchaser - possibly his co-defendant in the trial, Persi - with financial resources drained from his once high-flying photography agency.