«With the aggravating circumstance of having committed» the crimes of omission regarding changes in assets and fraudulent transfer «in order to conceal the more serious conduct of complicity in the massacres attributable to Silvio Berlusconi and Dell’Utri himself, for which Berlusconi is was investigated together with Dell’Utri himself, until the moment of his death which occurred in the period following the last contested donation, the latter’s disbursements constituting the amount received by Dell’Utri to ensure impunity for Silvio Berlusconi”. This is what the DDA of Florence contests against Dell’Utri in the act of closing the investigations into the assets of the former manager of Publitalia for which last March the Florentine judiciary ordered a seizure of 10 million and 840,000 euros: the company’s accounts were sealed former senator for around 2 and a half million and for 8.250 million to his wife Miranda Ratti.
Dell’Utri was investigated by the prosecutors of the Florentine DDA – also in charge of the still open investigation into the so-called masked instigators for the 1993 attacks – for the violation of the anti-mafia legislation in relation to the failure to communicate the changes in assets despite the final conviction for competition in mafia association. The DDA of Florence also formulated a second charge which also implicated Dell’Utri’s wife as well as the former manager of Publitalia. It is article 512 bis, “fraudulent transfer of values”, linked to 15 bank transfers for a total of 8 million euros paid by Berlusconi to Miranda Ratti herself. The prosecution contests the fictitious attribution to the woman to “evade the legal provisions regarding prevention measures”.
«The seizure concerns sums of money received by Dr. Dell’Utri and Mrs. Ratti through bank transfers made, in a completely lawful and transparent manner, by Dr. Berlusconi for reasons of affection and gratitude towards his friend Dell’Utri”, declared Dell’Utri’s lawyers Francesco Centonze and Filippo Dinacci last March when the seizure was carried out, which later became definitive due to the defense’s abandonment of its appeal. They are «absurd, slanderous and contradictory accusations against Silvio Berlusconi and Marcello Dell’Utri»: this is how the Berlusconi family lawyer Giorgio Perroni defined them today, speaking of «burning injustice» and «a shameful “system” that does not subside not even now” that the Knight “is no longer among us”. «Once again – he states – we read confidential judicial documents directly in the newspapers, introduced by biased and misleading headlines» but, he underlines, still «we do not read even a mention of the sentence of the Palermo court of last March 13, where it is categorically excluded that the donations of money from Berlusconi to Dell’Utri were used to ‘buy his silence’ nor a reference ‘to the fact that all the previous lines of investigation and all the trials that linked Silvio Berlusconi to the terrible mafia massacres ended up in nothing’.
