A Milan court has banned the former head of the Italian government, Silvio Berlusconi, from holding public office for the next two years. reported this on Saturday, October 19 Agence France-Presse .

Berlusconi has the right to appeal this decision to a higher authority. In addition, the court's ruling in this regard cannot come into force without the approval of the upper house of the Italian parliament, of which the politician is now a member.

The court's decision is related to the tax fraud case of the Berlusconi-controlled Mediaset holding, in which the politician was sentenced in October 2012 to four years in prison and a fine of ten million euros. Then the Milan court also banned the politician from holding public office for five years, but the Supreme Court subsequently ruled that this part of the punishment should be reconsidered.

Previously, the Italian authorities had already reduced the policy of actual imprisonment. Thanks to the amnesty law of 2006, it was reduced from four years to one year. At the same time, it is possible that the former prime minister will serve his sentence not in prison, but under house arrest.

The prosecutor's office held Berlusconi responsible for creating a mechanism in his media holding for purchasing rights to American films, which made it possible to avoid paying taxes on such transactions. According to the state prosecution, as a result, the Italian budget in 2002 and 2003 lost about seven million euros.

Berlusconi was accused in two more criminal cases related to tax evasion. Both of them were closed due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. At the same time, the politician has already been found guilty of paying for the services of a minor prostitute and of organizing the leak of police information about the wiretapping of his political opponents. None of these decisions have yet entered into force, since both of them were appealed by the politician in the appellate courts.

Berlusconi was banned from holding public office for two years