A Milan court on Monday opened hearings to decide whether former premier Silvio Berlusconi and British corporate lawyer David Mills should stand trial for allegedly perverting the course of justice in two corruption trials.
Neither Berlusconi or Mills, who is the estranged husband of British Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, were in court.
The judge immediately adjourned proceedings until Friday to give defence lawyers time to examine documents deposited by the prosecution at the end of last month. Mills' legal team has also deposited a raft of new paperwork which the British lawyer says will "completely demolish" the prosecution's case against him.
Mills helped Berlusconi, a billionaire media magnate, set up a network of off-shore companies before his 1994 debut into politics. Prosecutors say the lawyer received $600,000 from Berlusconi as payment for not revealing details of the premier's media empire in two trials.
Berlusconi and Mills deny wrongdoing, insisting that Mills received the money from Neapolitan shipping magnate Diego Attanasio. But in February, Corriere della Sera, Italy's biggest daily, reported that Attanasio had given a statement saying
that he could not have paid Mills because he was in jail at the time on corruption charges.
In the run-up to Italy's April general election, then-premier Berlusconi handed the press copies of documents which he said were the result of his own defence team's investigative work and proved "beyond all doubt" that Attanasio was the source of the money. He said the 15 pages "prove in an irrefutable way that neither myself nor Mediaset (Berlusconi's private TV network) have anything to do with the Mills case".
The documents consisted mainly of bank statements showing a complex passage of money from Attanasio's bank accounts to those of Mills. The Berlusconi-Mills case has received scant attention in the Italian media but has made big waves in Britain, where Jowell was accused - and subsequently cleared - of breaching parliamentary standards by co-signing a mortgage with Mills allegedly linked to the $600,000.
Mills, who separated from his wife under the media glare on the case, said in a letter to his accountant that the payment was a "gift" and that he had saved Berlusconi "from a great deal of trouble". "I told no lies but I turned some very tricky corners," the letter said. He has since disowned that letter and said the payment came from Attanasio.
Mills has accused Milan prosecutors of an "overtly political act", saying the prosecution's indictment request was made to coincide with Italy's general election. Judges are also in the process of deciding whether Berlusconi, Mills and 10 other people should be sent to trial in a related case involving alleged fraud at Berlusconi TV network Mediaset.
This case centres on Mediaset's purchase of TV rights for US films before 1999 through two offshore firms allegedly set up Mills. Prosecutors have asked that Berlusconi, Mills and the others stand trial on charges ranging from tax fraud, false accounting and embezzlement to money laundering.
The accused, who all deny wrongdoing, include Mediaset Chairman Fedele Confalonieri, top former officials at Berlusconi's Fininvest family holding company and veteran Egyptian film producer and former director Frank (also known as Farouk) Agrama.
Prosecutors believe that in deals covering the period 1994-99, the purchase costs of US films were artificially inflated, allowing Mediaset to avoid tax amounting to almost 125 billion old lire. They also say a slush fund was created for Berlusconi and his family.
Berlusconi's two eldest children, Piersilvio and Marina, who have also been under investigation for suspected money laundering, have been removed from the main case. Piersilvio Berlusconi is Mediaset deputy chairman while his elder sister Marina is Fininvest chairwoman as well as chairwoman of the group's publishing giant Mondadori. For Berlusconi, the most serious charge is tax fraud which carries a sentence of up to 6 years.
Prosecutors leading the investigation protested last month that their case had been "destroyed" by a justice reform law passed by the previous Berlusconi-led government. The law, passed in November 2005, reduces the statute of limitations on a host of crimes including corruption, false accounting, theft and fraud.
The law was heatedly opposed by the centre left, which accused Berlusconi of serving his own interests.
But the centre right argued the law would speed up the country's notoriously slow trial system, under which defendants are entitled to two appeals before a sentence can be considered definitive, by forcing magistrates to deal more quickly with cases.
Berlusconi, who is Italy's richest man, has repeatedly accused Milan prosecutors of hounding him for political reasons.
Over the past decade, he has been at the centre of numerous corruption investigations into his vast business empire.
He denies all wrong-doing and has never received a guilty verdict although in some cases he has been cleared only because of the statute of limitations or changes to the law introduced by his own government.
