The legal case involving the former Olgettine, the girls who were guests at the Arcore evenings, including Karima “Ruby” El Mahroug, is not over. The judges of the sixth penal section of the Court of Cassation, after two hours of deliberation, have ordered the appeal trial before the judges of Milan for 22 people accused of corruption in judicial acts. Among them Barbara Guerra, Francesca Cipriani and the sisters Concetta and Elenora De Vivo.
These are the positions for which the Milanese court had acquitted in the first instance in February 2023. The Supreme Court simultaneously declared the accusation of false testimony time-barred for all, while the money laundering charge for Luca Risso, Ruby's boyfriend at the time of the facts, was definitively dropped, for whom the appeal was declared inadmissible.
The acquittal in the first instance came about due to a legal issue as the girls were heard in the two Milanese trials on the Ruby case, more than ten years ago, as simple witnesses and not already under investigation.
That day, Silvio Berlusconi himself, who died on June 12 last year, was acquitted with the formula "because the fact does not exist". Marysthell Polanco, one of the former showgirls involved in the proceedings, spoke out about the decision taken by the ermines on Monday. "It's not over yet... Berlusconi is dead, but now the trial is mine. I thought it wouldn't go like this, he is acquitted and I risk being convicted. How is that possible?" . For his part, the defense attorney, Paolo Cassamagnaghi, says he is "eager" to "read the reasons" for this sentence. "More than thirteen years after the facts - he says - we start again: without some pieces, because they are time-barred, and without the alleged corruptor Berlusconi who died after being acquitted and the acquittal for him is definitive".
In the trial that came to the attention of the Supreme Judges after an appeal "per saltum" by the Milanese Prosecutor's Office, that is, bypassing the appeal, the representative of the prosecution last June had requested the annulment of the acquittals and a new trial for the charge provided for in Article 319 of the Penal Code. In justifying the request, the Attorney General Roberto Aniello had explained that, even if the hearing of the defendants as witnesses was "illegitimate, as they were reached by evidence of a crime, this does not affect the existence of the crime of corruption in judicial acts - is the reasoning of the Attorney General -, which remains configurable as the functions of public official were concretely exercised". These "conclusions also apply to the defendants Luca Giuliante, who is charged with the crime of active corruption as an intermediary and competitor of Berlusconi".
The Attorney General then cited a series of rulings by the Court of Cassation according to which - in his opinion - it has always been held that the qualification of witness and "therefore of public official, is acquired at the moment in which the judge orders the admission of the testimony; if there has been a prior authorization to the summons, this precedes the assumption of the quality of witness" and in this case this occurred "on 23 November 2011, the date of the order for the admission of evidence in the Ruby one trial".
The decision of the Court of Cassation is welcomed with satisfaction by the prosecutors of Milan. "We are satisfied with the authoritative confirmation of the correctness of our legal interpretation, just as we are confident, with these assumptions, about the outcome of the new trial that will be held", says the deputy prosecutor of Milan Tiziana Siciliano, who coordinated the investigations with the prosecutor Luca Gaglio.
"The decision of the Court of Cassation today surprises and amazes us", underlined Silvio Berlusconi's lawyers Federico Cecconi and Giorgio Perroni, convinced however that "the truth of the facts will be confirmed: that is, that there are no corrupt witnesses" . "We were confident in the confirmation of the first-instance sentence of February 2023, a full acquittal, 'because the fact does not exist', which in our opinion was perfectly motivated and free of defects. We are however certain - the lawyers assured - that in the proceedings that will now open at the Court of Appeal of Milan the truth of the facts will be confirmed: that is, that there are no corrupt witnesses".
(Online Union)
