Silvio Berlusconi 'paid Mafia bosses millions as protection money for 20yrs'!

A new judicial report suggests that disgraced former premier Silvio Berlusconi made a 20-year pact with Mafia bosses to whom he paid millions of euros in exchange for protection and help with his business empire.

The tycoon’s deal with the mob was described by judges of the Palermo Appeals Court as part of their 476-page reasoning, released on Thursday, behind the jail sentence for his Mafia association given to Berlusconi’s close friend Marcello Dell’Utri, the Independent reported.

The judges say that Dell’Utri, a Palermo-born former senator in Berlusconi’s PDL (People of Freedom) Party, was the mogul’s go-between with the Cosa Nostra for 20 years, up until 1992, the year in which the Mafia assassinated two prosecutors in bomb attacks.

The report follows a dreadful summer for the three-time prime minister. In June he was found guilty of paying for sex with an under-age girl and abuse of office in the “Rubygate” affair. In August, he was definitively convicted of tax fraud, for which he is due to serve a year of house arrest or community service, and is also likely to be expelled from parliament.