The untouchable Berlusconi

Italy's prime minister survives another corruption accusation — and scandal — with his popularity intact.

Sarah DelaneyMay 27, 2009 19:32Updated May 30, 2010 11:56

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi reacts before the Champions League final soccer match between Manchester United and Barcelona at the Olympic Stadium in Rome, May 27, 2009. (Max Rossi/Reuters)

ROME, Italy — It would have been a rough day for most prime ministers.

Last week, a Milan court revealed that a lawyer convicted of lying in two investigations regarding Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi’s financial empire, Fininvest, had accepted about 600,000 euros for shielding his client from charges of tax evasion.

But in Italy, everyone — and most of all Berlusconi — knows that this accusation, which would be politically damning for most Western leaders, is just one more blip on the radar screen of his long-running confrontation with the Italian judiciary. Berlusconi's many trials (102 by his count, most on corruption or financial fraud), have ended in acquittal, the running out of the statute of limitations, or cancellation because laws passed by his majority turned certain financial crimes into misdemeanors.

While his lawyer, David Mills, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison, Berlusconi will not stand trial. Last summer his majority coalition hurriedly passed a law exempting the four top political figures in the country from prosecution while in office.

But that wasn't all that happened to Berlusconi last week.

The former boyfriend of an 18-year-old aspiring model, named Letizia, whose relationship with Berlusconi is under intense media scrutiny, said the prime minister called her several times and spent New Year's Eve with her and several dozen other young women. (The former boyfriend told this to the left-leaning newspaper La Repubblica, which Berlusconi accuses of being on a campaign to destroy his political career.)

Oh, and earlier this month Berlusconi's wife of 19 years, Veronica Lario, said that she intended to divorce him. She was, she said, fed up with his much-noted appreciation of young starlets and press reports that he was fielding some of them as candidates in the upcoming European Parliament elections.

While he appears politically untouchable, Berlusconi does seem to be fraying at the edges.

“The Italians are with me!” he said in a fury last week when asked whether he would forego his immunity from prosecution in order to clear his name. “This makes me furious!” he told the reporter who dared ask, calling the sentence “scandalous, shameful” and said his innocence would be proven on appeal by a more impartial court.

When asked about his relationship with Letizia, Berlusconi told journalists, “Shame, you should all be ashamed of yourselves.” He said reporters had “targeted this girl in an unacceptable way … . I’m ashamed for you.” Leftist newspapers, he said, targeted him because they were motivated by “envy” and “hate.”