Rome, Feb. 15, (dpa/GNA) - Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was on Wednesday acquitted of charges of corruption and bribing witnesses in the trial relating to his so-called “bunga bunga” parties with young women.
At the conclusion of the third “Ruby” trial - named after a female escort who was also on trial – a court in Milan ruled that 86-year-old Berlusconi and 28 other mainly female defendants were innocent of the charges against them.
According to the prosecution, Berlusconi had paid the women to give false testimony in the first two trials, when he was accused of abuse of office and promoting the prostitution of minors. Berlusconi was acquitted for lack of evidence.
According to his legal defence, the businessman and member of parliament had achieved an acquittal of the best possible kind: ”We are enormously satisfied,” the ANSA news agency quoted his lawyer as saying.
Berlusconi was congratulated by his coalition partners in the right-wing government led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. “This is excellent news,” Meloni said after the acquittal.
Meloni had already decided on Monday that the government was withdrawing as a joint plaintiff and did not want damages from Berlusconi.
In 2017, the then centre-left government had initiated the legal case. As late as spring 2022, the lawyer for then prime minister Mario Draghi’s office demanded damages of €10.5 million ($11.2 million) from Berlusconi because he had brought Italy into “worldwide disrepute” through his behaviour.
The final “Ruby Three” trial carried the alias of a female escort, Ruby Rubacuori, or Ruby Heartbreaker, who was 17 years old at the time of the notorious parties that took place in Berlusconi’s villa.
The Moroccan-born woman, whose real name is Karima el-Mahroug, was also in court as a defendant on Wednesday and said after the acquittal: “The nightmare is over.”
GNA