The ECB had no right to investigate Silvio Berlusconi’s holdings in Banca Mediolanum, despite the late Italian prime minister’s conviction for tax fraud, the EU’s highest court ruled on Thursday.
Silvio Berlusconihas scored a posthumous victory at the EU’s highest court on Thursday in a long-running dispute over the ownership of the Mediolanum Bank from Milan.
The late media mogul and former Italian prime minister had the right to remain a shareholder in an Italian bankdespite having been convicted of tax fraudas the judges of the Court of law of the European Union.
Berlusconi still owned a property prior to the conviction
The European Central Bank (ECB) “could not legally object “Mr Berlusconi was the owner of a qualifying shareholding in Banca Mediolanum,” the Court ruled, since he merely “continued to be the owner of a qualifying shareholding which he had acquired before the transposition of the provisions of EU law on which the ECB had relied.”
The ECB, as the EU’s primary financial supervisor, is responsible for ensuring the integrity of anyone holding more than 10% of a bank’s shares. In 2016, the regulator questioned Berlusconi’s participationthrough its investment company Fininvest, in the bank, due to its conviction for fraud.
The 2022 General Court judgment is hereby annulled
Following the financial crisis, the power to oversee EU banks was transferred from national authorities to the ECB in Frankfurt. In 2014, the Bank of Italy ordered Berlusconi to sell his shares, a decision later overturned on appeal in national courts.
But judges said today that the ECB had no right to investigate a transaction that occurred when the bank was acquired by its own subsidiary, overturning an earlier General Court ruling from 2022 that had found in Frankfurt’s favour.
Regular and continuous presence in court
In his varied career, during which he served as prime minister three times, Berlusconi faced multiple trials on charges such as Mafia membership, bribery and underage prostitutionYes, but His only conviction was in a tax fraud case in 2013.
The prison sentence was for bribing a senator to bring about the fall of the centre-left government he headed. Romano Prodi. Berlusconi did not comply with the sentence, handed down by the Court of Naplesbecause their lawyers appealed and because the crime has expired.
He died in 2023, but his heirs and relatives, many of whom sit on Fininvest’s board of directors and have ties to his other companies, such as the television network Mediaset, continued to pursue the case.
Neither Fininvest nor ECB spokespeople responded to a request for comment.
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