Word: berlusconi
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...provocative 2006 film, The Caiman, Italian director Nanni Moretti imagines an explosive climax to the political life and times of Silvio Berlusconi. The film ends as the billionaire leader - devilishly portrayed by Moretti - is found guilty on corruption charges and makes a menacing declaration from the courthouse steps: "With my conviction, our democracy has been transformed into a regime, and all free men have the right to react against it in any way they see fit." As the fictional Prime Minister pulls away in his limousine, a mob sets the courthouse ablaze...
...Such a scenario is, of course, the stuff of an anti-Berlusconi filmmaker's vivid imagination. But reality may be inching toward fiction. The Italian Constitutional Court's decision late Wednesday to overturn an immunity-from-prosecution law risks setting off a high-stakes showdown between the 73-year-old Prime Minister and an array of antagonists, real and imagined. (See Silvio Berlusconi's worst gaffes...
...Berlusconi's center-right government had pushed through the so-called Lodo Alfano law last year. The law granted immunity for the country's four highest officeholders. The court's decision means the Prime Minister must now face outstanding criminal charges in three corruption cases that are already under way. Most notably, Berlusconi is accused of paying British-born lawyer David Mills to lie on his behalf during an earlier corruption trial. Mills, the husband of Britain's Olympics Minister, Tessa Jowell, has already been convicted in the case. Both Mills, who is appealing the verdict, and Berlusconi, deny...
...Berlusconi has plenty of experience fighting charges. He sarcastically boasts that he is "the most prosecuted" man in Italian history never to be convicted. His criminal record is indeed clean, thanks to a string of not-guilty verdicts as well as expired statutes of limitations and modifications to laws through his control of Parliament. In 2003, he became the first Italian Prime Minister to testify in a case against him, rousing a packed courtroom with a nearly hour-long defense in a Milan corruption case in which he was eventually acquitted. (See pictures of Italy...
...pictures of Berlusconi's women on LIFE.com...