An episode of the Report
investigative journalism show broadcast Sunday night by the
third channel of State broadcaster RAI focusing on probes
connected to late three-time ex-premier and media mogul Silvio
Berlusconi was garbage, his daughter Marina Berlusconi said on
Monday.
"Report's episode last night dedicated to Silvio Berlusconi
belongs to the category of the worst media-judicial garbage",
said the Fininvest holding company and Mondadori publishing
house president, the late premier's eldest daughter.
Marina Berlusconi said the episode "rummaged for nearly two
hours in a dustbin of unconnected, illogical charges that have
already been denied 1,000 times, even using parts of previous
shows and giving voice to discredited people".
She said it "attempted to resume defaming, paradoxical
accusations" regarding the alleged relationship between
Berlusconi and organized crime.
The allegations are "a quarter of a century old and have all
been regularly buried as part of multiple cases that have been
shelved", said Marina Berlusconi of the episode.
The show on Sunday night looked into Silvio Berlusconi's
financial and political empire and the role of his longtime
aide, ex senator Marcello Dell'Utri, in a "story on the
relationship between politics, the mafia and businesses which
continues to raise questions on the recent past of our country",
said Report.
Berlusconi, who died aged 86 in June 2023, had on several
occasions been probed, and cleared, for alleged complicity in
mafia bombings in 1993 that hit art and religious sites in
Florence, Rome and Milan killing a total of 10 people, just as
Dell'Utri was set to create the mogul's centre right political
party Forza Italia which swept him into power for the first of
three terms as premier in early 1994, defeating a
post-Communist-led alliance that had seemed poised to grab power
in the post-Bribesville vacuum.
In all those 1993 bombing probes Berlusconi was cleared at
initial stages of investigation as prosecutors judged he had no
case to answer.
Former senator Dell'Utri, however, served seven years for
external complicity in mafia association and Report said "his
intermediation between the leadership of Cosa Nostra and
Berlusconi was confirmed by a definitive sentence".
The programme also again delved into the allegedly murky origins
of Berlusconi's business fortunes which mafia turncoats have in
the past claimed were due to alleged links with the Sicilian
mafia, claims that again have never been proven.
Berlusconi's many supporters have always angrily denied
suggestions he got seed money from Cosa Nostra to enable him to
start out as a property developer in Milan before founding
Italy's first commercial TV empire.
Forza Italia said in a note issued Monday that "it is extremely
grave that, last night, Italians watching the public broadcaster
were subjected to a spate of cowardly lies built as part of a
violent and partisan political attack".
The note added that the television program used "an artificial
reconstruction of past judicial proceedings and of ongoing
investigations that have nothing to do with Forza Italia's
political activity, trying to influence in a deplorable way the
opinion of millions of citizens".
photo: Marina Berlusconi at her father's funeral on June 14,
2023
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