Berlusconi: court admits Senate of Italy as civil plaintiff in bribing trial

Wednesday, 26 February 2014. A court in Naples has granted the Senate of Italy's request to be a civil plaintiff in a new bribery trial with the involvement of Silvio Berlusconi.

A series of new investigations are leading a Neapolitanian court to set up a trial against Silvio Berlusconi, for bribing an Italian senator, though rumours spread that the senators might even be more than one.

Silvio Berlusconi screaming for vengeance against the "red judges"

The current case is about Mr Sergio De Gregorio, a member of the Senate of Italy who received €3m (£2.46m or $4.11m) for switching sides to centre-right, and by doing this helped bring down the centre-left government of Romano Prodi, and triggered an election that Berlusconi won, back in 2007.

Berlusconi: new trial for bribing senators, in quite a few occasions

Wednesday, 12 February 2014. A new investigation began today in Naples, regarding a few circumstances in which Berlusconi might gave offered money and other benefits to senators who would cast a favourable vote for the ex-prime minister.

Corruption what? 

There were a few situations in which Italian senators from a number of political sides took a last minute decision and turned against the will of their parties and voted in favour of Mr Berlusconi, and these circumstances sounded a bit fishy to some judges in Naples, who decided to investigate them. At least that's what we've learned from the news.

All this could cause new headaches to the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who has already been sentenced for tax fraud, is currently appealing against a prison sentence for having sex with an under-age prostitute and abuse of office (and the proceedings are now contiuing on the grouds that witnesses might have been bribed by Berlusconi), and was kicked out of the Senate of Italy (due to the first conviction).

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).