Prince Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy, the son of Italy's last king, has been cleared in a vice probe which saw him briefly jailed last summer and then prevented from leaving Italy.
A preliminary hearings judge in this northern Italian city cleared him of charges of helping to recruit prostitutes from Eastern Europe for a casino in Campione d'Italia, an Italian enclave in Switzerland.
After spending a week in jail last June, Vittorio Emanuele was granted house arrest but a judge ordered his passport confiscated in October because of a risk that he could skip the country to avoid prosecution.
The passport was returned in December.
The order for the son of Italy's last king not to leave Italy was in a way a paradox because from 1948 to 2002 he was banned from entering Italy.
The 1948 Italian Constitution banished the male members of Italy's former royal family for the links Emanuele's grandfather, Vittorio Emanuele III, had with Fascism.
The ban was lifted by parliament in November 2002.
