Berlusconi and the trial over the obscure bribing

Tue, 19 March, 2013. Neapolitan tribunal rejects “immediate judgement” in latest Silvio Berlusconi's proceedings for bribing members of the Senate of Italy, following the “Operazione Libertà” inquiry.

Sergio De Gregorio, unintentional target of a bribery?

“Operazione Libertà” (“Operation Freedom”) was the name that - back in 2006 and 2007 - Silvio Berlusconi gave to a series of actions taken in order to “acquire” politicians from the Romano Prodi led left-wing coalition and bring to an end the Prodi II Cabinet, basically a bunch of Communists (as Silvio would put it, and actually a few parties of the coalition did have the “Communist” word in their name).

During the “Operation Freedom”, some of the Senators from IdV (former magistrate Antonio “Tonino” Di Pietro's movement, “Italia dei Valori”, in English: “Italy of values”) – Antonio Razzi, Domenico Scilipoti and Sergio De Gregorio – switched side and became staunch defenders of Silvio Berlusconi (some of them up to his resignation in 2011).

Now Silvio Berlusconi is accused of having paid 2m euros to Sergio De Gregorio (apart from a funding to his movement, of course), as a slush fund. In an interview De Gregorio said: “Why they decided to give me 3 million euro? I've asked myself that too!”, but “I grabbed them” (just in case...).

Well, prosecutors will also ask him, as well as Silvio Berlusconi and Valter Lavitola, a recurrent protagonist of the Italian billionaire grey-zone activities (look at our blog's post on the alleged blackmail of Silvio, where the media tycoon stated that Italy is a “shitty country” that “sickens him”).

Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi said that magistrates had obliged De Gregorio to say what he said.

“Immediate judgement” was refused by the court in Naples, so we will deal with this one for a while...

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