Here are the main passages of the talks between Silvio Berlusconi and judge Amedeo Franco.
F: «Even colleagues who are not his admirers, on the contrary they are political adversaries who, however, are correct people have had the impression that this whole affair has been guided (..) has been guided from above to the Prosecutor General and the first President (. ..) Berlusconi must be condemned a priori because he is a rascal, this is reality ».
The crucial step in the story is the decision to bring forward the hearing by entrusting it to the working section, chaired by Antonio Esposito. “Many retired people come to tell me in fact they did some rubbish, what sense does it make to send it to the weekday? Such a delicate matter goes to the competent section, it does not go where there are five, which only one out of necessity understands about this thing and the other four do not understand anything. Then a working section is always done with the latest arrivals, kids ». Franco talks about a meeting on this issue of Berlusconi’s lawyers with the first President of the Cassation, Giorgio Santacroce, before the hearing, where the secretary of the Court, Franco Ippolito, a democratic judicial toga considered very close to Giorgio Napolitano, also arrives: “The fact that his lawyer and President Letta are received by the first president together with the secretary general is something that has never happened. What does the secretary general have to do with such a decision? ‘ And again: «Gianni Letta went to Santacroce who turned to him, who had the support to be appointed president, and he is surprised when Santacroce receives him with Ippolito, historical exponent of the Democrats. What was Ippolito doing there, whose spokesman was he? “
Franco talks to Berlusconi about his dissent towards the sentence and the decision, in the end, to sign it: «If for me I find a way, to ease my conscience, because I carry this weight, I keep thinking about it, I don’t free myself. They involved me in one thing … »
B: “But excuse them practically forced you to sign?”.
F: «No, I could refuse, it was a matter of ten minutes, I had already gone with the whole thing to say I don’t sign, the president tells me but if you don’t sign, do whatever you want, they will attack you from the right and from the left”. And even after the sentence, the shadow of the Quirinale reappears: “Then after the first president also says ah, you see, even the President of the Republic has made it known that he is happy that you have decided uniformly to what the Prosecutor General said (…) in short, there are too many things wrong. “
B: «They were very determined?».
F: “I don’t know bad faith, the president’s bad faith surely”.
B: “That is, has Esposito decided everything?”
F: «The college that has been found is a botched college, it is something that should not have been done, I am still thinking today if I had imagined I was hospitalized and I solved the problem (…) it was a process not fair, because now if the defense asks for a postponement the prescription is suspended, so it was no longer prescribed, it could return to those who are competent (…) the prejudices that were necessarily there, you could try to prevent it from ending in the hands of this firing squad, as has happened, because it couldn’t have been worse ».
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