(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 27 - Three-time ex-premier and centre-right Forza Italia (FI) leader Silvio Berlusconi was ordered Friday to pay 50,000 euros in damages for defaming a former prosecutor in a trial involving alleged offshore slush funds allegedly enabled by the media billionaire's former British lawyer and tax expert David Mills, former husband of Tony Blair's late sports minister Tessa Jowell.
    The supreme Court of Cassation rejected an appeal by Berlusconi against a civil sentence to compensate former Milan prosecutor Guido Robledo with 50,000 euros for damages for defamation, as established by the Brescia Court of Appeal in 2020.
    The facts date back to 2006 when, during a press conference, the then Prime Minister accused the prosecutors in the Mills trial of refusing "to carry out the proper rogatory" in the Bahamas, which he said would have denied them, and defined them as "unworthy magistrates who are plotting against the Prime Minister with Italian money in the middle of the election campaign".
    Mills was accused of money-laundering and alleged tax fraud involving Berlusconi; he was convicted in first instance and on appeal, but the conviction was quashed by the Supreme Court of Cassation under the statute of limitations. (ANSA).