Judgment day nears for Silvio Berlusconi

The man in the crowd yelled out: "Submit to justice like an ordinary citizen, buffoon! And wind up like Ceausescu!" It was the insulting end to a gripping morning of courtroom drama in which Silvio Berlusconi became the first sitting Italian Prime Minister to appear at his own trial.

Charged with bribing judges to win a takeover battle, Italy's premier and wealthiest man took 45 minutes to explain to the court in Milan that he had only become involved in the business deal to oblige an old friend and help out the state. "I am proud," he said, "I repeat I am proud of my behaviour."

The trial has already been in progress for more than three years, without the benefit of Mr Berlusconi's presence. Less than a week ago, when his close friend and colleague Cesare Previti was sentenced to 11 years in jail for very similar offences, Mr Berlusconi wasted no time in denouncing the "politicisation" of Milan's "persecuting" judiciary. Yesterday he sat alongside his lawyers and addressed the judges as if he was, indeed, just another citizen, to whom the motto pinned up in every Italian courtroom, "The Law is Equal for All", applied inevitably and impartially also to him.

So what is Mr Berlusconi's game? The media magnate is in more than another awkward scrape. In less than two months, on 1 July, Italy assumes the rotating presidency of the European Union. If this trial runs its expected course it will all be over in July. Italy faces the appalling possibility of taking its turn at the head of the EU led by a convicted criminal.

Mr Berlusconi has already moved Heaven and Earth to avoid this contingency. He spent months ramming a Bill through parliament that would enable him to get the case moved from Milan to Perugia, home to a kindlier set of judges.

The Bill was passed, but Mr Berlusconi's claim of "legitimate suspicion of bias" was thrown out by Italy's highest court of appeal.

Previti's conviction and stiff sentence proved that Milan means business. So Mr Berlusconi can rant and rave outside the court. But at some level he must also deal with the court on its own terms. Hence yesterday's appearance.

So many people wanted a glimpse of Mr Berlusconi in action that the judges were forced to move to a bigger courtroom. In the three years since the trial started, this was in fact the second time he had shown his face. Once last month he stayed for five minutes but left without saying anything.

Yesterday Mr Berlusconi told the packed, sweltering courtroom that he had joined the battle to buy a state-owned food conglomerate called SME at the request of Bettino Craxi, Prime Minister at the time and Mr Berlusconi's old friend and political patron, who later died in exile in Tunisia, convicted in absentia of corruption.

Agreement on the firm's fate had already been reached between Romano Prodi, chief of the state company IRI, which owned SME, and another business mogul, Carlo De Benedetti. But Craxi told Mr Berlusconi that the price agreed was far too low.

"I had no direct interest," Mr Berlusconi told the court, "and Craxi begged me to intervene because he believed the operation was damaging to the state." Another motive for bidding for SME, he admitted, was that "I still had a score to settle with De Benedetti", who was an old rival of Mr Berlusconi. The offer by Mr Berlusconi and others to buy SME trumped Mr De Benedetti – thanks, it is alleged, to the bribing of Rome's judges. That is the substance of the charges Mr Berlusconi is facing. Yesterday he had nothing to say on the bribing of judges.

Instead he turned the court's attention to Mr Prodi, the centre-left leader who trounced Mr Berlusconi in the general election of 1994, and who is now president of the European Commission. In court, without mentioning Mr Prodi by name, Mr Berlusconi said that the former economics professor did not have the authority to agree to the sale of SME to Mr De Benedetti. He also hinted at the possibility of bribery influencing the sale.

"I have come to learn," he said, "that two directors of IRI were indignant when they learnt of Mr De Benedetti's offer, at the moment when it was being signed." He had learnt, he said, that Mr De Benedetti had remarked: "I'm not here to make offers but to sign. The two directors left their seats, leaving only De Benedetti and the president of IRI [Mr Prodi] to conclude the deal." One of Mr Berlusconi's lawyers submitted to the court a letter sent to Mr Berlusconi on 29 April by a businessman, Giovanni Fimiani, alleging what he describes as "the grave blame and responsibility of Professor Prodi, residing undisturbed in Brussels".

Later Mr Prodi issued a statement saying the facts of the case showed his "constant concern to protect state interests, to defend the independence of public enterprise from any outside pressure". Mr Prodi has never been the subject of any corruption charges.

A source in the centre-left opposition said on condition of anonymity that he was "astonished" at Mr Berlusconi's performance in court. "He's played no part in the trial at all even though he's one of the accused; today he didn't sit in the dock, he just said what was on his mind as if he were a neutral witness, as if he had just walked in from the street. I believe the speech is part of a personal strategy to radicalise and polarise political opinion in the country in the run-up to local elections at the end of May, trying to turn the election into a contest between himself and 'the communists', just as he did in the general election of 2001."

Because, as often before in Mr Berlusconi's extraordinary past, he is in desperate trouble and on solid ground at the same time. There seems to be no way out of his judicial problems: if he loses this case, ignominy, appeals, disgrace, perhaps long years in jail would appear to loom. Yet, thanks to the feckless, disunited opposition, his political position is not all that bad. He risked a lot by backing the war in Iraq when the Pope was strongly against it, but his support remained steady. He gaily turned the latest general election into a personality contest and won hands down. Mr Berlusconi has said that if he is convicted he will call a snap election.

That could throw the country into a constitutional crisis, becoming in effect a contest between Mr Berlusconi and the judiciary. But it cannot be ruled out that he wouldn't do just as well as in 2001.

As he swept out of the court and the angry man outside shouted "You'll wind up like Ceausescu!", Mr Berlusconi pointed to him and ordered the military police at his side to take down his particulars.

SCANDAL! THE TRIALS OF EUROPE'S MORE CONTROVERSIAL LEADERS

Europe has had no shortage of political corruption cases that have either made their way through the courts or been quietly dropped.

Bettino Craxi, the man named by Silvio Berlusconi yesterday as the person who persuaded him to bid for the state food conglomerate SME, was the leader of Italy's Socialist Party, and built up an efficient system of corruption. Political legitimacy was dispensed to local party branches in return for securing the kickbacks necessary to keep the party machine rolling. His party's flagrant attitude to corruption – party members who objected were, remarked the Socialist Mayor of Milan, "cretins who still don't understand how the world goes round" – contributed to his dramatic fall in the "earthquake election" of 1992. He fled to Tunisia and died there in disgrace in 1999. Giulio Andreotti, 84, who has served seven times as prime minister, ran an equally efficient party machine for the Christian Democrats. But he played a far more subtle game than Craxi, as is suggested by the fact that he is still around. To widespread consternation, he was convicted last year of ordering the murder of a journalist and sentenced to 24 years in prison.

In France, President Jacques Chirac's name has been connected with half a dozen criminal investigations into the financing of his now defunct neo-Gaullist party, the RPR, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In all cases, the accusations concern the misuse of Paris town hall funds, or the soliciting of kickbacks for large public contracts, when M. Chirac was mayor of Paris between 1977 and 1995. In most cases, the accusations concern illegal party funding rather than personal enrichment.

However, M. Chirac has been accused of using public funds to lead an extravagant lifestyle. All of the allegations have been dropped, or placed in abeyance, following a ruling that a sitting French president cannot be tried, or even investigated, by the ordinary justice system. M. Chirac faces potential criminal investigation when his term ends in 2007 – unless he wins another mandate.

In Germany, the reputation of Helmut Kohl was tainted by his admission in 1999 that he had secretly run a multi-million mark fund from party contributions. German law required him and his Christian Democrat party to disclose donations of more than 20,000 marks (£6,500). He created a further scandal by refusing to name the donors. He subsequently stepped down as a member of parliament.