Berlusconi goes before court in intercepted phone calls case

PanARMENIAN.Net - Silvio Berlusconi appeared Tuesday, February 7 in a Milan court, as magistrates were set to decide whether the former Italian prime minister must stand trial in a case involving intercepted telephone conversations, M&C reported, citing DPA.

The case stems from the 2005 publication, in a newspaper owned by Berlusconi's brother Paolo, of potentially embarrassing excerpts of a telephone conversation involving Piero Fassino, a leading member of Italy's centre-left Democratic Party - the main opposition to Berlusconi's then-ruling conservative coalition.

In September, investigative magistrate Stefania Donadeo told prosecutors to request that Berlusconi be indicted on charges of “revealing official secrets,” in relation to the transcripts that were published by Il Giornale.

In the conversation, Fassino had encouraged Giovanni Consorte - then-president of Unipol, a insurance company close to the Democratic Party - in his takeover bid for the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro bank.

Consorte was later convicted on insider trading charges related to the takeover bid. Fassino, who is now mayor of Turin, was not implicated in the case.

Prosecutors had dropped their investigation into Berlusconi's role in the case, but Donadeo rejected the prosecutors' decision and said there was sufficient evidence for Berlusconi to be indicted - in a move described by Italian media at the time as “unusual.”

Berlusconi, who resigned as premier in November, is involved in three trials, two of which are linked to the business dealings of his Mediaset company. In the third case, the 75-year-old former premier is accused of having paid for sex with an underage Moroccan dancer.