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Silvio Berlusconi firm Fininvest holding company ordered to pay €750m to rival CIR SpA in bribery case
By Robert J. Steiner for CEOWORLD Magazine Updated:October 4, 2009
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The Italian holding company CIR SpA (CIRX.MI) said on Saturday that a court had ordered Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Fininvest holding company to pay it 750 million euros in damages for bribing a judge in a 1990s takeover battle.
The case revolves around a 1991 ruling in which a Rome court effectively enabled Fininvest, owned by the Berlusconi family, to acquire a controlling stake in the Mondadori publishing house (MOED.MI) from CIR, controlled by Berlusconi’s arch-rival, Carlo de Benedetti, reuters reported.
A court decision in 2007 found that Fininvest had bribed a judge to win favour over rival CIR, run by Carlo de Benedetti.
Berlusconi himself was not involved in the suit due to statute of limitations.
The Berlusconi family was able to expand its influence in the print media and publishing with the purchase. The rival de Benedetti family controls the Berlusconi-critical Rome daily La Repubblica and the magazine L’Espresso.
The award for damages has to be carried out immediately.
Fininvest President Marina Berlusconi, the daughter of Silvio, planned to appeal what she called a “deeply unfair decision.”
Claimed that Fininvest had always worked at a “height of correctness,” she said the court’s judgement had been delivered at a time when her father was most vulnerable to attack.
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