JUST ONE month after Italy’s constitutional court annulled legislation that gave prime minister Silvio Berlusconi immunity from prosecution while in office, his centre-right Freedom Party (PDL) yesterday presented a judicial reform Bill in the Senate which leading opposition figures have termed “an amnesty in disguise”.
The annulment of the “Lodo Alfano” last month paved the way for Mr Berlusconi to stand trial in at least two proceedings that had been blocked by the immunity law.
First, he faces allegations of bribery by his Mediaset company with regard to the purchase of TV rights, while in a separate case he is accused of having paid British lawyer David Mills a $600,000 (€403,900) bribe in return for false testimony in court cases involving his Fininvest company in the 1990s. Legal experts argued yesterday that the effect of the reform Bill would be to force the eventual dismissal of both those cases since they would now fail to meet the cut-off time provisions in the proposed law.
The proposed legislation, largely drafted by the prime minister’s own lawyer, PDL deputy Nicola Ghedini, envisages a six-year cap on the length of certain trials, imposing a two-year cut-off point on all three levels of judgment – the initial hearing and two subsequent appeals. Proponents point out that the Bill applies only to crimes that carry a prison sentence of less than 10 years, while it would not apply to Mafia crime, pornography or repeat offenders.
Inevitably the proposal has prompted outrage from both the opposition and the national association of magistrates (ANM).
Antonio Di Pietro, leader of the Italy of Values party and former investigating magistrate, yesterday called the Bill “unconstitutional, immoral and against the interests of Italians” and “the biggest amnesty in disguise of all time”. He said his party would launch a campaign shortly to collect signatures to force a referendum on the proposed law.
The magistrates’ association struck a similarly alarmist note. While it did not label the Bill an amnesty, the ANM called it a “substantial depenalisation of matters of relevant and objective gravity”, adding that the Bill would affect at least 100,000 current trials, thus having “a devastating impact on the functioning of the Italian penal justice system”.
The ANM also expressed doubts about the constitutionality of the proposed measure.
Senior Democratic Party figure Anna Finocchiaro expressed concern about the judicial impact of the Bill on trials such as that involving Parmalat, the food products giant that collapsed in December 2003, leaving debts of more than €14 billion and wiping out the savings of more than 100,000 small investors. Company boss Calisto Tanzi and 22 other defendants were ordered to stand trial in July 2007. Under the terms of the PDL proposal, the Parmalat trial would now be dismissed since it has not yet concluded the first level of judgment, more than two years after it began.
Centrist opposition figure, Pierferdinando Casini of the UDC, argued that the proposal was obviously tailor-made to resolve Mr Berlusconi’s legal problems.”