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Italy’s Highest Court Upholds Berlusconi Tax Fraud Sentence

August 1, 2013 by

The sentence the court confirmed was four years, but it was automatically reduced to one year under a law aimed at combating prison overcrowding.

The decision by the Court of Cassation was the first time Mr. Berlusconi has received a definitive conviction in 20 years of tangles with Italy’s judicial system. In the other cases brought against Mr. Berlusconi over the years — which range from tax evasion to buying judges to embezzlement — he was either acquitted on appeal or the statute of limitations ran out.

However, Thursday’s ruling does not automatically send Mr. Berlusconi to jail or house arrest. The same Milan appeals court that convicted the former prime minister must also formally request his arrest. Mr. Berlusconi’s lawyers could also request a suspended sentence.

A Senate committee must rule on whether Mr. Berlusconi must resign from public office, a procedure that could take months. Almost all lawmakers handed definitive sentences have chosen to leave Parliament of their own volition in order to avoid embarrassment.

Opposition politicians immediately called for Mr. Berlusconi to resign out of respect for a Parliament elected to uphold laws, not break them. Vito Crimi, a member of Parliament from the Five Star Movement, called the it “shameful” that Mr. Berlusconi would stay in public office. “I would expect that all his MPs call for his resignation out of respect for Parliament.”

The ruling could upend his center-right People of Liberty party, more a charismatic movement than an ideologically coherent party, and also strain the center-left Democratic Party, elements of which have never liked sharing power with their former rival.

Mr. Berlusconi is still facing trial on charges of paying for sex with the Moroccan-born Karima el Mahroug, nicknamed Ruby Heartstealer, when she was still a minor, and abusing his office to cover it up.

In the case upheld Thursday, prosecutors had argued that Mr. Berlusconi and other defendants bought the rights to broadcast American movies on his networks through a series of offshore companies and falsely declared how much they paid in order to avoid taxes.

Experts had said that if the high court upheld the tax fraud sentence, Mr. Berlusconi, 76, would more likely face house arrest, considering his age.

In comments published recently on his party’s Facebook page, Mr. Berlusconi, a former prime minister, said he was prepared to go to prison if he was convicted, and would not go into exile like Bettino Craxi, Italy’s former Socialist leader, who died in exile in Tunisia after a party-finance scandal that brought down the Italian postwar political order in the early 1990s.

The case has once again brought Mr. Berlusconi to the fore of the national conversation, where he occupies far more space and airtime than Mr. Letta, the current prime minister.

For days, Mr. Berlusconi’s core of loyal supporters has been up in arms, lambasting the Italian judiciary for what it sees as its attacks on him, and some members of Parliament from his People of Liberty party have hinted that they would leave the government if he was convicted.

Others seem to be enjoying the spectacle. A verdict that was upheld would be “the death of democracy,” Daniela Santanchè, a former government official best known for her frequent television appearances defending Mr. Berlusconi, wrote on Twitter.

Many, even on Mr. Berlusconi’s own legal team, said they believed the court would uphold the sentence in some form.

The dozens of trials involving Mr. Berlusconi have often caused political turmoil. In July, members of Mr. Berlusconi’s party stormed out of Parliament and blocked parliamentary activities for a day after the court set the hearing for the tax fraud case earlier than expected.

Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/world/europe/ruling-on-berlusconi-case-by-italys-top-court-is-expected.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

In Major Ruling, Court Orders Times Reporter to Testify

July 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

In a 118-page set of opinions, two members of a three-judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va. — the court whose decisions cover the Pentagon and the C.I.A. — ruled that the First Amendment provides no protection to reporters who receive unauthorized leaks from being forced to testify against the people suspected of leaking to them.

“Clearly, Risen’s direct, firsthand account of the criminal conduct indicted by the grand jury cannot be obtained by alternative means, as Risen is without dispute the only witness who can offer this critical testimony,” wrote Chief Judge William Byrd Traxler Jr., who was joined by Judge Albert Diaz.

Mr. Risen has vowed to appeal any loss at the appeals court to the Supreme Court, and to go to prison rather than testify about his sources. On Friday, he referred a request to comment to his lawyer, Joel Kurtzberg, who wrote in an e-mail: “We are disappointed by and disagree with the court’s decision. We are currently evaluating our next steps.”

Judge Roger Gregory, the third member of the panel, filed a vigorous dissent, portraying his colleagues’ decision as “sad” and a serious threat to investigative journalism.

“Under the majority’s articulation of the reporter’s privilege, or lack thereof, absent a showing of bad faith by the government, a reporter can always be compelled against her will to reveal her confidential sources in a criminal trial,” he wrote. “The majority exalts the interests of the government while unduly trampling those of the press, and in doing so, severely impinges on the press and the free flow of information in our society.”

The Justice Department offered no immediate comment. The ruling raises an awkwardly timed question for Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who has portrayed himself as trying to rebalance the department’s leak investigations in response to the furor over its aggressive investigative tactics, like subpoenaing Associated Press reporters’ phone records and portraying a Fox News reporter as a criminal conspirator in order to obtain a warrant for his e-mails.

Last week, Mr. Holder announced new guidelines for leak investigations that significantly tightened the circumstances in which reporters’ records could be obtained. He also reiterated the Obama administration’s proposal, made in response to the controversy, to revive legislation to create a federal media shield law that in some cases would allow judges to quash subpoenas for reporters’ testimony, as many states have.

“It’s very disappointing that as we are making such good progress with the attorney general’s office and with Congress, in getting them to recognize the importance of a reporter’s privilege, the Fourth Circuit has taken such a big step backwards,” said Gregg Leslie, the legal defense director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Mr. Risen is a national security reporter for The Times, but the case revolves around material he published in his 2006 book, “State of War,” not in the newspaper. A chapter in the book recounted efforts by the C.I.A. in the Clinton administration to trick Iranian scientists by having a Russian defector give them blueprints for a nuclear triggering device that had been altered with an error. The chapter portrays the operation as reckless and botched in a way that could have helped the Iranians gain accurate information.

In December 2010, a former C.I.A. officer, Jeffrey Sterling, was accused of being Mr. Risen’s source and indicted on Espionage Act charges. His is one of seven leak-related cases brought so far by the Obama administration, more than twice as many as under all previous presidents combined.

The appeals court’s move, which came more than a year after it heard oral arguments in the case, reversed a ruling by Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., who had sharply limited what prosecutors could ask Mr. Risen about his sources. She had written that he was protected by a limited “reporter’s privilege” under the First Amendment.

“A criminal trial subpoena is not a free pass for the government to rifle through a reporter’s notebook,” she wrote.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/20/us/in-major-ruling-court-orders-times-reporter-to-testify.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

Appeals Court Rejects S.E.C. Rule on Access to Proxy Materials

July 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The ruling, by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is at least the third time in six years that the court has thrown out a new S.E.C. rule because the agency failed to adequately assess its economic effects.

The S.E.C. approved the regulation, which has long been sought by unions, pension funds and other institutional investor groups and fiercely opposed by business lobbyists, by a 3-2 vote last year. The rule would have required companies to include in their proxy materials information about shareholder-nominated candidates for election to a corporate board of directors.

Past efforts by the S.E.C. to guarantee shareholders access to company proxy statements have been challenged over whether the agency had the authority or whether it was primarily a matter of state law. But the Dodd-Frank Act, the regulatory overhaul signed into law last July, gave the S.E.C. explicit authority to write new proxy access rules.

The new regulation was scheduled to become effective in November, but the agency stayed that pending the outcome of a court challenge filed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, a trade group for corporate executives. The case, No. 10-1305, was argued before the appeals court in April.

Under the rule, groups that owned at least 3 percent of the voting power of a company’s stock for at least three years could nominate candidates for a corporate board and have them included in the company’s proxy materials, mailed to shareholders at the company’s expense.

Currently, outside groups mounting a proxy contest to elect board candidates must pay for their distribution of materials.

The three-judge appeals court panel rebuked the S.E.C. for its failure to satisfy the provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires cost-benefit studies to justify a new government regulation, in its adoption of the proposal.

The court ruled that the S.E.C. “acted arbitrarily and capriciously” in failing to adequately consider the rule’s effect on “efficiency, competition and capital formation.”

“Here the commission inconsistently and opportunistically framed the costs and benefits of the rule; failed adequately to quantify the certain costs or to explain why those costs could not be quantified; neglected to support its predictive judgments; contradicted itself; and failed to respond to substantial problems raised by commenters,” the court said, in a unanimous decision written by Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg.

Kevin J. Callahan, an S.E.C. spokesman, said the agency was “reviewing the decision and considering our options.”

The S.E.C. could seek a rehearing before the panel or the entire appeals court or could appeal the case directly to the Supreme Court. It also could abandon the initiative or restart the rulemaking process with a new proposal, including additional economic analyses and comments from the public.

A second S.E.C. regulation, which allows shareholders to submit proposals for proxy access at their companies, adopted at the same time, is unaffected by the court’s decision.

A Chamber of Commerce official called the ruling “a big win for America’s job creators and investors.”

“We applaud the court’s decision to prevent special-interest politics from being injected into the boardroom,” Thomas J. Donohue, president and chief executive of the chamber, said in a statement. “Companies and directors need to continue to focus on the important work of creating jobs and reviving our economy.  Today’s decision also sends a strong message that regulators need to meet their statutory requirement to clearly prove that the benefits of regulation outweigh the costs.”

The panel said the commission had not sufficiently supported its conclusion that increasing the potential for shareholder-nominated directors would improve performance and shareholder value.

Roger J. Dennis, dean of the law school at Drexel University in Philadelphia, said the D.C. Circuit has been particularly tough on the S.E.C.’s rulemaking in recent years.

“Cost-benefit analysis is not a science,” he said. Requiring the commission to have “excruciating detail” on the costs and benefits of a proposal “is a stealth way of telling them that they don’t have the right to regulate it.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=6ca460d14e3e0234382873f40f619788

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,