ROME — Italy's flamboyant billionaire Silvio Berlusconi was sentenced to jail Thursday for wiretap leaks. But the former prime minister's umpteenth return to politics has not been marred by a series of trials against him. The 76-year-old has shrugged off scandal to score political triumphs time and again and recently came a close second in the country's general elections despite lurid allegations surrounding his sex life and multiple accusations of fraud. On Thursday, an Italian court sentenced the former prime minister to a year in prison over the publication of leaked transcripts from a police wiretap in a newspaper he owns, which were widely seen as an attempt to discredit the center-left Democratic Party ahead of 2006 elections. Under Italian law, the media tycoon will not serve time because people aged over 75 and with sentences of less than two years do not have to actually go to prison and sentences are in any case suspended pending appeals. Berlusconi's image as a long-suffering businessman fighting the establishment has endured in Italy throughout a stormy political career, and he has vowed more than once to stay in politics to reform the very justice system that he claims has long been persecuting him. Thursday's verdict came in the middle of a political impasse arising from last week's election which left no party able to form a government on its own, although Berlusconi's center-right formation emerged as the second strongest in parliament. Berlusconi is in the middle of a series of trials, with separate cases over charges of tax fraud and paying for sex with an underage prostitute due to wind up this month. Following Thursday's verdict, he repeated denials that he was in any way connected with wrongdoing and said the decision showed that politically motivated judges were conducting a campaign against him. “It is impossible to tolerate judicial persecution of this kind which has been going on for 20 years and which re-emerges every time there are politically complex moments in the political life of our country,” he said in a statement. Berlusconi's brother Paolo, publisher of the family-owned Il Giornale daily, was sentenced to two years and three months over the same case, which centered on confidential wiretap transcripts related to a bank takeover which appeared in the newspaper. The court awarded 80,000 euros in damages to Piero Fassino, who was head of the main center-left party at the time of the incident and whose remarks were caught on the wiretap and published in the newspaper. Fassino asserted that Il Giornale published the transcripts shortly before the 2006 election to create the impression that he had exercised improper pressure in the attempted takeover of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro by insurer Unipol in 2005. Late on Wednesday, Italy's highest appeals court upheld a ruling clearing Berlusconi of tax fraud in connection with his Mediatrade broadcasting rights firm. The decision cleared Berlusconi of accusations that Mediatrade, the broadcast rights unit of his Mediaset group, acquired film and television rights at inflated prices to evade 10 million euros ($13 million) in taxes in 2004. His trial on charges of paying for sex with a juvenile prostitute is expected to wind up on March 18 while a separate trial over broadcast rights is expected to conclude on March 23. — Agencies
