A close aide of Premier Silvio Berlusconi was on Wednesday allowed out of jail to serve a judge-bribing sentence under house arrest. Cesare Previti, 71, a former Berlusconi attorney and defence minister, received his six-year sentence last week after a high-profile and controversial ten-year legal process involving two appeals.
He immediately applied for house arrest under a controversial new law passed by the Berlusconi government allowing people over 70 to serve their terms at home. Previti has spent five days in a Rome jail.
An elderly lawyer sentenced to the same term, Attilio Pacifico, was also placed under house arrest under the new law.
The judge convicted of taking bribes to award a massive settlement after a corporate takeover, Vittorio Metta, is not over 70 and could in theory go to jail. But he is in a Rome hospital with a heart condition and has asked to be allowed to stay there for the duration of his sentence - also six years.
The Cassation Court gave Previti his definitive six-year sentence on Thursday.
He was convicted of passing on a huge bribe from oil company SIR to gain a billion-lire settlement from public financial holding company IMI, which has since been privatised.
He resigned from parliament as required by law.
In Thursday's verdict, the Cassation Court also convicted another lawyer found to have acted as a go-between but quashed a five-year sentence against another alleged ring-leader, judge Renato Squillante. The heirs of oilman Nino Rovelli were cleared.
Squillante was cleared because he acted "as a sort of private intermediary" and did not use his judicial powers, the court said.
However, Squillante has been convicted along with Previti in another judge-bribery case involving a takeover battle for a foods group with Berlusconi's long-time rival Carlo De Benedetti, the former Olivetti boss. Previti got five years and Squillante seven in a December appeals verdict which they are appealing. Berlusconi was cleared, and saved from a prosecution appeal under a new law passed by his government curtailing prosecutors' rights to appeal against convictions.
In a surprise ruling on Thursday, the Cassation reopened a third case which involves the same defendants and the outgoing premier's Fininvest holding company.
The prosecution claims Fininvest paid Previti to fix a ruling awarding Berlusconi Italy's biggest publishing house Mondadori, ending a battle with archrival De Benedetti.
The appeals court acquitted Previti and the other defendants. Berlusconi was no longer a defendant in that retrial because the statute of limitations kicked in.
Previti and Berlusconi - who has been tried in several other cases but never received a definitive sentence, sometimes because of law changes - insist they are the victims of a politically motivated judicial witch-hunt.
