Sentence is read out on Silvio Berlusconi: four years imprisonment, exclusion from holding public office for five years, and 10 million euros to be deposited with the tax collector -
l'Agenzia delle Entrate - while the appeals are heard
. The mills of God, that's what the
Agenzia delle Entrate are. Tax fraud - gets them all in the end.
17.5 billion lire in 2000, 6.6 million euro in 2001, some 4 million in 2002 and around another 2 million in 2003: that's a great deal of money, as Mervyn King remarked of the £28 billion handed over to Northern Rock - though that was in another country and no-one will be condemned.
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7 comments:
Will it stick, HG? Given that the man seems to have a Teflon coating that makes Blair look like a babe in arms?
- later reduced to one year -
Emits lengthy sigh...
We don't want to be vindictive now, do we Elby? Just the conviction will do. He's an old man - he can't be sent to prison really anyway - at least, not in Italy.
Do they do bunga bunga parties in security wing D?
In this neck of the woods, 'bunga bunga' means 'flowers'.
Yes, fair enough HG - but even from this distance the man is utterly revolting.
It isn't often that an event makes us afraid, really afraid, but this time there is good reason to be.
The conviction seems almost technical - tax evasion - even if the sums are enormous. But the thing that is being dragged out of the water is an enormous corruption. An international as well as Italian corruption, for there are well over 20 other states' judiciaries engaged in investigations and prosecutions linked with associated companies and activities.
These funds are not rather large scale tax evasion, they are part of the fondi neri, the black resources, of criminal and gangster government. This is the funding of the subversion of the democratic world: the buying of witnesses, the bribing of judges, the downing of representatives of the democratic state, the warping of commercial and financial activity....
He, and his people are so angry they are capable of saying (doing?) anything at the moment. We do not strike at interests and power bases like this without response.
There isn't a prison that would take him, Nomad. He's not a buffoon, he's part of a monster.
Yes, this is how they got Al Capone.
There are still two further judicial levels to go through before the decision is final. And - courtesy of a centre-left government law of 2006 - anybody over 70 never goes to prison but serves a prison sentence under house arrest, even for serious financial crimes.
But there is time until 2014 for both the Appeal and the Cassazione Courts to reach a final decision, in spite of all the obstacles the disgusting scoundrel placed on the Magistrates' path, from fast proscription to trial absences due to so-called "legitimate" impediments, and other ad personam tricks (like the de-penalisation of false balance sheet) that a tame and opportunistic centre-left government never reversed.
And the spell has been broken, other convictions are likely to follow.
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