Berlusconi's lawyer convicted of bribery

Silvio Berlusconi's carefully laid plans to escape the judgment of Milan were in ruins yesterday after the Italian Prime Minister's friend, lawyer and political colleague Cesare Previti was sentenced to 11 years' imprisonment for bribing judges.

The culmination of a trial that lasted nearly three years, dogged at every step by the frantic attempts of Mr Berlusconi and Previti to derail it, came at 11.10pm on Tuesday. After deliberating for more than seven hours, the judges convicted all but one of the six accused, all formerly high-flying judges and lawyers, to jail terms ranging from four years to 13.

The defendants were accused of giving and receiving bribes amounting to 67bn lira (£24m) to encourage judges in Rome's appeal courts to award ownership of two business conglomerates, including Italy's biggest publisher, Mondadori, to Mr Berlusconi's company, Fininvest.

The Prime Minister was originally one of the accused, but dropped off the list under the statute of limitations because the charges against him were less serious.

His office responded to the sentencing of Previti, a senator in Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, harshly. "This is an ugly day for Italian justice," his spokesman said. Mr Berlusconi added: "The politicisation of certain magistrates, which has come to condition our political life, is a problem that must be resolved for the good of the country, of the institutions and of Italian citizens."

Mr Berlusconi had devoted his political energy to preventing yesterday's embarrassment. Against angry opposition protests, he rammed through a law allowing cases to be transformed to a different judiciary if "legitimate suspicion" that the judges are biased could be proved. But when Previti used the new law to try to get his case switched from Milan, Italy's highest court of appeal turned him down.

The sentencing of Previti was seen as a humiliation for Mr Berlusconi, "at least embarrassing", said Giuseppe D'Avanzo of La Repubblica newspaper, "for a man who, as proprietor of Mondadori, was the direct benefactor of this corrupt act". But it was not expected to weaken his grip on power.

Francesco Perfetti, professor of politics at Rome's University of Luiss, said: "I rule out the possibility that the conviction will have an immediate impact on the stability of the government." A corruption scandal that broke during Mr Berlusconi's previous term as Prime Minister, in 1994, hastened the downfall of that government. But this time his coalition appears more robust, while the centre-left opposition is in disarray.

Previti, who like the other defendants was not present in court for the judgment, declared angrily: "[The judges] have brought to a conclusion what they had decided to do in advance ... I have been persecuted by the 'red togas'. It's a political sentence. I will appeal."

The verdicts and the sentences vindicated the painstaking prosecution of Ilda Boccassini, who tracked for the court what one commentator called the "whirling circuits of money". Huge sums vanished from accounts held by the lawyers and popped up in accounts owned by the judges.

This is a dark culmination for Mr Berlusconi, but it is also just the beginning – the verdict in a case in which he stands accused of bribing judges to gain control of a food company, is expected in the summer.