Milan: Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has been found not guilty of witness tampering, in a trial related to the sexually charged “bunga bunga” parties he held at his villa near Milan while he was in office.
Silvio Berlusconi in Rome last year.Credit:AP
The six-year-old trial is the third and likely final one in a scandal that made headlines around the world in 2010 when Berlusconi – as a sitting leader – faced charges of having paid for sex with an underage girl. He was eventually acquitted.
In the third trial, Berlusconi faced charges of paying off witnesses to lie in earlier trials. Prosecutors had sought a six-year prison sentence for him, along with €10 million ($15.5 million) in damages. A further 28 people, including the woman at the centre of the scandal, Karima el-Mahroug, were also all found not guilty on Wednesday.
“I am very happy,” Mahroug told reporters after hearing the acquittal, adding that it showed she had always spoken the truth. “I just need a moment to assimilate this fact, to believe it.”
Berlusconi was not present when the verdict was read, but in an Instagram post said the acquittal had ended years of “suffering, of mud and of incalculable political damage”.
Karima el-Mahroug, aka Ruby Rubacuori, one of the women who attended the bunga bunga infamous parties, presents her book to prosecutor Tiziana Siciliano, right, at the trial’s in the bunker room of Milan’s San Vittore jail.Credit:LaPresse/AP
His lawyer, Federico Cecconi, called the verdict, which formally found no crime had been committed, “the fullest acquittal we could achieve”.
The earlier trials took place as Berlusconi still wielded considerable power as prime minister, raising concern among security officials that he had left himself vulnerable to extortion by hosting young women at his villa.
The 86-year-old three-time former leader is currently head of the third party in the country’s right-wing governing coalition, whose popularity has shrunk significantly from its heyday to around 6 per cent now, according to polls.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni welcomed the verdict, saying it “puts an end to a long judicial affair that had important repercussions on Italian political and institutional life”.
Meloni’s administration this week took the step of removing the government as an injured party in the case, to avoid creating an awkward political dynamic concerning guilty verdicts.
Berlusconi’s defence described the dinner parties, dating from 2010, as elegant soirées; prosecutors said they were sex-fuelled gatherings that women were paid to attend and where witnesses described showgirls stripping provocatively for Berlusconi.
Both Berlusconi and Mahroug, who was 17 at the time, denied ever having sex with each other, and Mahroug, now 30, says she never worked as a prostitute.
AP
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