By Our Foreign Staff 11:39AM GMT 07 Mar 2013
Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister, has been sentenced to a year in prison over the publication of leaked transcripts from a police wiretap in a newspaper he owns.
Silvio Berlusconi faces a number of trials this month Photo: Reuters
He stood accused of violating secrecy laws after his Il Giornale daily published transcripts in 2005 that were widely seen as an attempt to discredit a senior member of the centre-left Democratic Party ahead of elections in 2006.
The leaks were about the attempted takeover of BNL bank by insurance giant Unipol.
Mr Berlusconi's brother Paolo, editor of Il Giornale, was sentenced to two years and three months.
The verdict carries no impact on Mr Berlusconi's eligibility to participate in a new government.
Italian sentencing guidelines indicate that people aged over 75 and with sentences of less than two years do not have to actually go to prison. Mr Berlusconi is 76.
Mr Berlusconi, who faces two more verdicts this month for tax fraud and having sex with an under age prostitute, can appeal the conviction which would suspend the sentence under Italian law.
Earlier, Italy's highest appeals court upheld a ruling clearing Mr Berlusconi of tax fraud in connection with his Mediatrade broadcasting rights firm.
The decision late on Wednesday clears Mr Berlusconi, 76, of accusations that Mediatrade, the broadcast rights unit of his Mediaset group, acquired film and television rights at inflated prices to evade 10 million euros in taxes in 2004.
The rulings come in the middle of a complex Italian political stalemate following last week's inconclusive election, which left no party able to form a government on its own.
Mr Berlusconi's centre-right formation is the second-strongest group in parliament. But its prospects of a return to government have been held back by the refusal of centre-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani to accept a "grand coalition" with his long-standing rivals.
More to follow
