Formigoni convicted in Maugeri case, goes to jail

(ANSA) - Rome, February 22 - Italy's highest court of appeal, the supreme Court of Cassation, on Thursday night handed down a term of five years and 10 months in jail to former Lombardy governor Roberto Formigoni in a corruption case involving Milan's Maugeri private clinic and the northern city's San Raffaele Hospital.
    The jailing order for the former Berlusconi ally was signed don Friday morning and Formigoni went to jail at Bollate near Milan. However, Formigoni's defence lawyers applied for him to be granted house arrest - but prosecutors said they would say no to the request.
    Meanwhile centre-right Forza Italia (Fi) leader Silvio Berlusconi called Formigoni "the best governor of them all".
    The prosecutor general had asked for a term of seven and a half years, the maximum, to be upheld.
    "There was an imposing corruptive bartering," said Prosecutor General Luigi Birritteri.
    The maximum term should be upheld, he said, "considering (Formigoni's) role and the mass of corruption, which leave it hard to imagine an affair of a similar gravity".
    Formigoni has always maintained his innocence.