A Milan court ordered Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest company Saturday to pay rival media group CIR 560 million euros after it bribed a judge to approve a company takeover.
The Milan appeals court reduced by a quarter the original 750-million-euro ($1-billion) damages claim that a civil court had ordered the holding company to pay in October 2009, the ANSA news agency reported.
This was compensation for Fininvest having wrested control of the leading Mondadori publishing house from Compagnie Industriali Riunite (CIR) in 1990.
A judge ruled in 2009 that Berlusconi was "co-responsible" for the bribery of a judge, who decided in favour of Fininvest in the takeover battle.
That judge was convicted of corruption in 2007 and sentenced to two years and nine months in prison. The Fininvest lawyer who bribed him was given a sentence of one year and six months.
CIR, whose honorary president is Berlusconi rival Carlo de Benedetti, which runs the weekly news magazine L'Espresso and the left-leaning daily newspaper La Repubblica.
Both are avid chroniclers of the sex scandals that have been dogging the Italian premier.
In response to the appeal by Fininvest, judges on Saturday awarded damages to CIR of 540 million euros as of the date of the initial judgment; 560 million with interest.
The fine was payable immediately, the judges said.
MAJOR SETBACK FOR BERLUSCONI
On Tuesday he abandoned efforts to push through a controversial law proposal that would have suspended such fines pending a final ruling by the country's highest court.
But the last-minute proposal, added to a wider package of austerity measures to be debated by parliament, was widely criticised as a bid to shield Fininvest.
Even the Northern League, Berlusconi's coalition partners, opposed the move.
But Fininvest president Marina Berlusconi, the prime minister's daughter, said they were not giving up.
"Our advocates are looking into a further appeal," she said after the ruling.
"We are convinced we are in the right, we will not let ourselves be intimidated," she added, denouncing the damages figure as "double the value of Fininvest's stake in Mondadori".
"It's a hard blow for Fininvest, financially and economically, as the sentence recognises the group's responsibility for corruption," said Franco Pavoncello.
Berlusconi had tried to defend the move to change the law as a way to protect companies from financial penalties "erroneous" court judgments inflicted no them.
Workers in companies that struggled after being hit with such fines should blame the opposition parties for their "shameful" resistance to his measure, he said.
Analysts said Saturday that the ruling would not sink Berlusconi in the short term. But in any case, he himself announced this week that he would not be running again in 2013 elections.
"Neither Berlusconi nor (his Northern League ally) Bossi has a future in the long term, so they are not worried about what will happen in 2013, they continue to move ahead trying to gain time," said Franco Pavoncello, a political science professor at the American University of Rome.
Political scientist Giacomo Marramao of Rome III university agreed.
"The problem is there is no unity on the Italian left, which does not have a coherent line," he said.
Berlusconi is currently facing three trials.
He has been accused of having paid for sex several times with Moroccan-born Karima El Mahroug, also known as "Ruby the Heart Stealer", in 2010 when she was 17, a crime punishable by three years in jail.
He is also accused of abuse of power for having pressured police in Milan to release El Mahroug from custody when she was arrested for theft.
He denies all the charges against him.
Berlusconi cannot be prosecuted in the Mondadori case, as the facts were legally prescribed in 2001 -- meaning the period for legal action had expired.
