MILAN: An Italian court on Wednesday acquitted billionaire former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi of bribing witnesses to lie about his notorious "bunga bunga" parties.
"I can only be enormously pleased," Federico Cecconi, the lawyer for the 86-year-old media mogul and senator, told reporters after the verdict.
Berlusconi had already been acquitted in two other related cases of alleged bribery, in Siena in 2021 and in Rome in 2022. Wednesday's decision "can put a definitive end to this long procedure, where three different courts have reached the same conclusions," Cecconi said.
Milan prosecutors had accused Berlusconi of paying young starlets and others for "silence and lies" about his notoriously hedonistic soirees, which he insists were elegant dinners.
Berlusconi, whose Forza Italia party is a member of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's governing coalition, has long been dogged by legal battles, nearly all of which he has won. Berlusconi did not attend the hearing in Milan's Aula Bunker courthouse next to the San Vittore Prison, which came after a trial lasting six years.
Hush money
Berlusconi was accused of bribing witnesses to lie in a previous trial in which he was charged with paying for sex in 2010 with then-17-year-old Moroccan nightclub dancer Karima el-Mahroug, better known by her stage name "Ruby the Heart Stealer."
He was initially found guilty, but acquitted in 2014 after an appeals court found there was no proof he knew she was a minor. Judges believed however that a series of people had lied, including Mahroug, who was caught on tape bragging about sex with Berlusconi and described orgiastic scenes at his parties, before later saying she made it up.
Prosecutors launched an investigation that led to the Milan trial, which opened in 2017. They accused the tycoon, who was prime minister three times between 1994 and 2011, of doling out millions of euros in hush money in the form of houses, cars and monthly payouts. However, Berlusconi's defence lawyers say the money was compensation for reputational damage for those involved in the case, and insist Berlusconi was being tried "for the crime of generosity."
Sex slaves
In her closing arguments in May, prosecutor Tiziana Siciliano had described the former premier as "a sultan" who used to "liven up his evenings with a group of concubines, in the sense of sex slaves, who entertained him for a fee."
While some of the women involved say nothing untoward happened in Berlusconi's Arcore villa near Milan, which has a private nightclub, others have described orgies and female guests dressing up as nuns to perform erotic dances. Prosecutors had called for sentences of between one and six years for the 27 other defendants in this case, including five years for Mahroug. All were acquitted on Wednesday.
Former model Marysthell Polanco, a guest at Berlusconi's parties who faced five years in prison for alleged corruption, had earlier told journalists her life had been "a nightmare" since the trial began. "They cannot find guilty someone who has done nothing, where there's no evidence, neither videos nor photos, nothing but gossip," she said.
Prosecutors had also asked the court to confiscate 10.8 million euros ($11.5 million) from Berlusconi and seize properties he made available to people accused of lying for him. Despite multiple court cases -- he claimed in 2021 to have gone through 86 trials -- the former premier has never spent time behind bars.
Berlusconi was temporarily banned from political office after a conviction for tax fraud in 2013, for which he served a community sentence. He then returned to the political front lines and was re-elected as a senator last year.