Berlusconi says he will be cleared of tax fraud conviction

(ANSA) – Rome, November 27 – Ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi insisted Wednesday that he will be cleared on the criminal charge that led to the Senate vote which ejected him from parliament.

“I am absolutely sure that the end of these actions will be the reversal of the judgment, with my full acquittal,” Berlusconi said during a rally with supporters shortly before the Senate vote.

One day earlier, Berlusconi said that an affidavit from the former CEO of his US business associate Frank Agrama’s film group would prove his innocence of tax fraud and would ultimately allow him to retain his Senate seat.

The three-time premier and media mogul said the affidavit from Dominique O’Reilly-Appleby would clear him of benefitting from an offshore tax-dodge scheme on inflated film rights traded by his Mediaset media group that he claims was set up by Agrama without his knowledge.

“There is testimony in the US papers from a top manager in the Agrama group that proves I had no part in the mechanism,” Berlusconi told one of his three TV stations Tuesday.

“I was never a silent partner of Agrama’s but on the contrary I was the injured party in this operation which wreaked damages of several million dollars to Mediaset,” he said.

Berlusconi also claimed he had never met Agrama – despite a photo showing the pair together.

In August Italy’s supreme Court of Cassation made a final ruling in the case, in which a series of shell companies was found to have siphoned off 370 million euros in taxpayers’ money, and sentenced Berlusconi to four years, commuted to one by an amnesty.

The supreme-court judges said Berlusconi was the “creator of the mechanism for twisting (film) rights”. The sentence triggered an automatic ban from office under a new anti-corruption law, ratified by the Senate on Wednesday.

The centre-right leader said he would present Appleby’s affidavit and other evidence to a court in Brescia near Milan in the hope of having the case reopened.

Legal experts quoted in the Italian media Tuesday said Berlusconi appeared to have a weak case, and one of his lawyers said they might not file the petition after all.

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