Open Letter To Italian PM

Why we are sending an open letter to the Italian prime minister


TO HIS many other talents, Silvio Berlusconi has recently added that of ironist. The Italian prime minister entered the role of president of the European Union's Council of Ministers with a bang, by likening a German member of the European Parliament to a Nazi-era concentration camp guard. Many failed to see the joke. And the resulting imbroglio with the German government had a paradoxical effect: it distracted attention from the very accusation that the German MEP had been noisily making, namely that Mr Berlusconi has exploited his parliamentary majority in Italy to put himself beyond the reach of the law.

For that is indeed what he has done. Dogged by a series of judicial investigations and court cases when he entered office in 2001, Mr Berlusconi has managed to defeat the prosecutors and the courts. He secured the downgrading of the charge of false accounting for private companies, with retrospective effect, thus making accusations against him barred under the statute of limitations. He tried to change the rules on the admissibility of documents obtained from across the border in Switzerland, and tried to get the jurisdiction of his big remaining criminal trial moved. Finally, having failed with those measures he managed to bring in a law making Italy's prime minister, along with the country's other top officials, immune from prosecution during their time in office. As a democratically elected leader, with grave and onerous responsibilities to the people, Mr Berlusconi argued that he should not be made subject to the indignity of a trial. His justice minister, Roberto Castelli, went even further, causing a furore within the governing coalition last week by trying to block a judicial investigation into alleged tax fraud at Mr Berlusconi's biggest media company. (This week he was forced to relent.) It is beyond the prime minister's dignity even to be investigated.



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An open letter to Silvio Berlusconi

Jul 30th 2003
From Economist.com



Silvio Berlusconi
Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri
Palazzo Chigi
370 Piazza Colonna
Rome 00187


July 30th 2003


Dear Mr Berlusconi,


I am writing to you to pose questions that I believe the public has a right to hear the answers to. As this can no longer occur through the Italian courts, such questions should be posed and answered in public.

On June 18th, the Italian parliament approved a bill to grant immunity from criminal trials to the holders of the five highest offices of state, including the president and prime minister. It is now a law. The law applies even if a trial started before the office-holder was elected. The new law's most immediate effect is that the one remaining criminal trial in which you are involved ?-the SME case, in which you are accused of bribing judges?-has been suspended until you are no longer prime minister. Even then, the trial will start again only if you were not elected to one of the other offices that benefits from the immunity. But the law is being challenged in the constitutional court.

On April 28th 2001, we published a cover story entitled "Why Silvio Berlusconi is unfit to lead Italy" and a four-page investigation "An Italian story". We sent you a letter on April 11th 2001, containing 51 questions, that stated: "The Economist intends to publish shortly a feature on your business career and on the various investigations into you and your companies that have been carried out by the Italian magistracy during the last seven years". You did not reply.


On May 2nd 2001, you filed a writ for defamation against The Economist in the Rome court. As you will know, this court has not yet ruled on your suit.


In light of the above, we are writing to you by way of open letter and challenge you to answer our further set of questions in a similar open, public fashion. Our letter comprises six sections as follows:


1. The SME affair

2. Your spontaneous declarations

3. The smearing of Romano Prodi

4. Your gold medal claim

5. Your other trials

6. Your early business career



We look forward to your reply

Yours sincerely



Bill Emmott

Editor

The Economist