Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi Berlusconi has been cleared of trying to silence women about private parties because he was not investigated at an earlier stage and with the necessary procedural safeguards, according to the verdict statement released on Tuesday.
The 86-year-old tycoon was charged with a crime of corruption for allegedly paying for the silence of the participants of his “bunga bunga” parties, at his home in Arcore, near Milan, 28 of whom were charged with perjury and have also been acquitted in February, in the trial known as the Ruby case.
The case was one of several that stemmed from allegations that Berlusconi had paid for sex with Moroccan teenage dancer Karima El Mahroug, nicknamed Ruby the Heartstealer, when she was a minor.
The Forza Italia frontman was also acquitted in the original case, as judges ruled he had no way of knowing the teen was underage.
In the statement released Tuesday, the judges said there was evidence that Berlusconi had paid large sums of money to El Mahroug a year before the original trial.
The fact that the youths were not under investigation for alleged corruption, and that they had not been heard as witnesses at the time, essentially invalidated the charges, as the verdict explained that they could not be witnesses.
An appeal against the acquittals is being considered, based on the fact that previous verdicts in the case were contradictory.
Berlusconi’s lawyers denied that he had been acquitted on a technicality, arguing that his arguments were fully justified.
Source: DN
