Officials in the office of State President Giorgio Napolitano have spotted small print in a bill that proposes €47bn (£42bn) of public spending cuts. The offending paragraph in article 37 will allow Mr Berlusconi's Fininvest group to avoid a crippling €750m compensation payment a business rival, Carlo De Benedetti. Senior officials in the State President's office were said to be furious about the inclusion of the offending paragraph and there were doubts about whether Mr Napolitano would agree to rubber stamp the bill in its current form.
The €750m payment – potentially disastrous for Fininvest – was ordered by judges last year. The company, which holds the Prime Minister's key business assets, including his Mediaset broadcast empire and AC Milan football club, bribed a judge back in 1991 to acquire a controlling stake in Mondadori, the country's leading publishing house. In 2007, a criminal court found Mr Berlusconi's ally and former lawyer Cesare Previti had bribed one of the two Rome judges hearing the takeover battle to find in favour of Fininvest over Mr De Benedetti's CIR group. Under the new proposals, such payments of more than €20m would not be obligatory until cases are finally settled in the Supreme Court – which in Italy can take years – and would save Fininvest millions of euros in interest payments.
Rosy Bindi, president of the centre-left Democratic Party, said the proposal showed "how Berlusconi uses the office of Prime Minister to guarantee his impunity from prosecution and to protect his business interests".
Giuseppe Maria Berruti, a judge in the civil law section of the Court of Cassazione, Italy's highest legal authority, said the article was "designed to favour serious debtors and would produce irreversible damage to the legal system".
The "austerity" finance package, maybe good news for Mr Berlusconi's business interests, but is set to inflict pain on the rest of the country. Pensions will be hit, and some economists predict €10bn in health service cuts, which will mean €500 extra in annual health bills for each Italian family. Local authority budgets will also be cut, leading to higher local taxes. The bulk of the €47bn savings would be delayed until mid- 2013 – to help the conservative government's chances at the next general election.
No comments:
Post a Comment