Veteran Sardinian wheeler-dealer and businessman Flavio Carboni was convicted of forming part of a secret association in the P3 influence-peddling case on Friday.
Carboni, 86, was sentenced to six years and six months in jail in the case, a sentence he is unlikely to spend behind bars because of his age.
Former centre-right and then centrist Senator Denis Verdini
was acquitted of being a member of a secret association but was
sentenced to one year and three months, a suspended sentence,
for illegal party funding and ordered to pay a fine of 600,000
euros.
Businessman Arcangelo Martino was sentenced to four years and
nine months for violating the Anselmi Law banning subversive
groups.
In all, eight people were convicted.
Former economy undersecretary Nicola Cosentino got a
suspended 10 month term for defamation and private violence; and
former Cassation Court president Vincenzo Carbone got two years,
also suspended, for abuse of office.
The cases of other defendants including former Sardinia
governor Ugo Cappellacci timed out.
Cappellacci, the regional chief of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza
Italia party, had been accused of embezzlement and abuse of
office in connection with the Sardinian wind-farm industry.
Tax lawyer Pasquale Lombardi was accused of secret
association but died on March 2.
In November 2016 Rome prosecutors requested 18 convictions in
the trial into the so-called P3, a secret cabal that sought to
exert undue influence on the State.
Defendants included Verdini, formerly a close aide of
ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi who later supported the left-right
government of Premier Matteo Renzi on some reforms.
Prosecutors requested nine years six months for
Carboni, eight years six months for ex-tax judge Lombardi and
businessman Arcangelo Martino, five years for former Cassation
judge Carbone, and four years for Verdini.
They also requested one year six months for Cosentino, a
former economy undersecretary from Berlusconi's now-defunct
People of Freedom (PdL) party, and a one-year sentence for
ex-Sardinia governor Cappellacci for abuse of office.
Cosentino - who was elected MP four times between
1996-2008 as a member of the PdL - in June 2016 was found
guilty of corrupting a prison guard.
Cosentino was also involved in the so-called Eco4 trial on
alleged Camorra infiltration into Caserta-area consortiums.
He was arrested in April 2014 along with 12 others for
alleged extortion and unfair competition in favor of his family
petrol-pump business in the southern Campania region.
Also on his rap sheet is a March 2013 arrest on suspicion
of collusion with the powerful Casalesi clan of the Neapolitan
Camorra mafia, whose death threats have forced anti-mafia writer
Roberto Saviano into 24-hour police protection.
Also risking prison sentences were: frontwoman Antonella Pau
(three years), consortium president Pinello Cossu and
businessman Alessandro Fornari (two years), businessman Fabio
Porcellini (one year six months), former regional cabinet member
and current Pontecagnano Mayor Ernesto Sica (one year six
months), Massimo Parisi, a former Tuscany regional coordinator
for Berlusconi's current Forza Italia (FI) party (one year),
Sardinia Regional Environmental Protection Authority (ARPA)
president Ignazio Farris (one year), the legal representative of
a company called Ste Srl, Pierluigi Picerno (one year), and
frontpeople Giuseppe Tomassetti and Maria Laura Scanu Concas
(one year).
Prosecutors also requested the director of UniCredit bank in
the Sardinia city of Iglesias, Stefano Porcu, be fined 10,000
euros.
Former senator Marcello Dell'Utri, once among Berlusconi's
closest aides, is on trial for criminal association and
violating a 1982 law against secret associations - the so-called
Anselmi law - in separate proceedings in the same case.
Dell'Utri is currently serving seven years for colluding with
the mafia.
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