Prime Minister accused of exploiting Italy's spending cuts to avoid business liability.
Silvio Berlusconi has attracted the ire of Italian MPs across the political spectrum after it was alleged that government legislation before parliament had been designed specifically to benefit one of his companies.
To the outrage of opposition MPs, alert officials in the office of State President Giorgio Napolitano have spotted small print in a bill that proposes €47bn (£42bn) of public spending cuts, which appears less than austere with the billionaire Prime Minister's finances.
The offending paragraph in article 37 will allow Mr Berlusconi's Fininvest group to avoid a crippling €750m compensation payment to a left-wing business rival, Carlo De Benedetti.
Under the 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".
Source and full story: The Independent, 6 July 2011
