Former Prime Minister of Italy, Berlusconi sentenced with Four Year Jail Term

Silvio Berlusconi, the former Prime Minister of Italy was sentenced a term for four years of imprisonment for tax fraud, and was also banned from holding any public office, by the Court of Italy on 26 October 2012. But this sentence would not directly lead him to jail as the cases in Italy needs to pass a minimum of two levels of appeal before the finalisation of the verdict takes place.

In total 11 people were on trial accused of declaring the series of payments by false means by the offshore companies to avoid taxes in the scheme of purchasing the rights of broadcast of the US movies on the private networks of Mediaset Empire.

All the previous criminal cases against the former premier of the state landed to be acquittal. He has been convicted in the case with 10 more people as accused and needs to deposit $13 million in the fund of appeals for the losses incurred by the tax authorities, in what they called large-scale fraud.

The trial of the case started in the July month of the year 2006, when he was in office but was put on hold because of the immunity law that shielded him from the prosecution being the premier of the nation. The prosecution could have not been done until he left from his office.