Italy’s Senate passed into law on Tuesday a bill effectively shielding Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi from prosecution while in office, a move critics say aims to protect him from corruption charges.
The law grants political immunity to the incumbents of Italy’s four most powerful positions: the posts of prime minister, president and the speakers of the two parliamentary chambers.
It was approved by 171 votes to 128 against, with six abstentions, the ANSA news agency reported.
Italy’s lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, approved the bill earlier this month.
The most immediate beneficiary of the law is Berlusconi, who had been facing trial on a charge of having paid his British lawyer David Mills, US$600,000 to give favorable testimony in two trials.
The pair, along with a dozen other defendants, were on trial in Milan for tax fraud in the purchase of film rights in the US by Mediaset, the television group owned by the Berlusconi family.
Berlusconi, 71, has repeatedly accused magistrates, notably in his native Milan, of conducting a politically motivated campaign against him.
He was elected to a third stint as prime minister in April, but this time his coalition had a strong enough majority to pass the controversial proposals, which he had tried unsuccessfully to usher in during previous terms in office.
Earlier on Tuesday Justice Minister Angiolino Alfano defended the bill in a speech to the Senate just hours before the final vote.
“To critics who have called into question the speed with which this law has been presented ... I say that this law is not premature, nor too late, it is right,” said Alfano, in comments reported by ANSA.
The immunity law had been vigorously opposed both by magistrates and much of the left-wing opposition. It is one of the measures that Berlusconi’s critics said were designed to protect him from the corruption trials that have pursued him for many years.
Berlusconi, a self-made billionaire, has faced charges including corruption, tax fraud, false accounting and illegally financing political parties.
Although some initial judgments have gone against him he has never been definitively convicted.
The media magnate’s battles with the law have marked his public life since he burst onto the political scene in the mid-1990s.
Under the new law, any statute of limitations applying to a case would be suspended until the defendant left office. But the immunity could not apply in the case of a politician moving from one of the four posts to another.
Berlusconi plans further reforms of the judiciary for the autumn. He says they are designed to speed up the notoriously slow progress of legal cases through the courts.
But he also wants to curb what he sees as the excessive powers of the magistrates, reforming the top magistrates’ council that appoints judges.
“Changing the composition [of the council] is dangerous and would lead to a loss of independence” for magistrates, said Edmondo Brutti Liberati, former head of another body, the National Magistrates’ Association.
The current independence of Italy’s magistrates dates back to the post-war era, when a strong court system was seen as a bulwark against a repeat of fascism.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS