Berlusconi's allies angry over hearing date for tax fraud appeal

PanARMENIAN.Net - Silvio Berlusconi's lawyers and allies cried foul after Italy's highest court set a remarkably quick July 30 hearing date for his tax fraud appeal. It was seen as an apparently accelerated timetable aimed at preventing the statute of limitations from expiring on one of the charges, Belfast Telegraph said.

The Court of Cassation set the date as soon as Berlusconi's lawyers deposited their appeal on Tuesday, July 9 an almost unheard of quick turnaround for Italy's notoriously slow justice system. The stakes of the ruling are incredibly high for Berlusconi, who has dodged legal woes for much of his two decades in politics but now faces the spectre of being barred from holding public office for five years if his sentence is upheld.

In May, an appeals court in Milan upheld Berlusconi's tax fraud conviction and four-year prison sentence. He was convicted in a scheme that involved inflating the price his Mediaset media empire paid for TV rights to US films and pocketing the difference. Berlusconi has said he did nothing wrong and has accused Milan magistrates of pursuing politically motivated cases against him.

The stakes of the appeal are also high for Italy - Berlusconi's support of Premier Enrico Letta's government is crucial to its survival.

His centre-right forces are allied with the Democratic Party in a grand coalition, and although Berlusconi holds no governmental posts, he remains influential.

Letta declined to comment yesterday on the justices' decision other than to say he did not think the outcome would affect his government.

Berlusconi's lawyer, Niccolo Ghedini, said that the court's decision to schedule a hearing during its summer session was unprecedented for a case such as this. And he disputed the purported reason behind it, saying the statute of limitations on one charge would not expire until September 15, and another not until September 2014.