Three-time ex-premier and
centre-right Forza Italia (FI) leader Silvio Berlusconi was
ordered Friday to pay 50,000 euros in damages for defaming a
former prosecutor in a trial involving alleged offshore slush
funds allegedly enabled by the media billionaire's former
British lawyer and tax expert David Mills, former husband of
Tony Blair's late sports minister Tessa Jowell.
The supreme Court of Cassation rejected an appeal by Berlusconi
against a civil sentence to compensate former Milan prosecutor
Guido Robledo with 50,000 euros for damages for defamation, as
established by the Brescia Court of Appeal in 2020.
The facts date back to 2006 when, during a press conference, the
then Prime Minister accused the prosecutors in the Mills trial
of refusing "to carry out the proper rogatory" in the Bahamas,
which he said would have denied them, and defined them as
"unworthy magistrates who are plotting against the Prime
Minister with Italian money in the middle of the election
campaign".
Mills was accused of money-laundering and alleged tax fraud
involving Berlusconi; he was convicted in first instance and on
appeal, but the conviction was quashed by the Supreme Court of
Cassation under the statute of limitations.
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