ROME (AFP) - A state prosecutor called on a Milan court to impose an eight-year jail sentence on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on charges of bribing judges.
Prosecutor Ilda Boccassini said Berlusconi had kept up regular payments to judges in Rome to help his company Fininvest in a corporate takeover battle stemming from the mid-1980s.
The prosecutor also demanded the court impose a lifetime ban on Berlusconi from seeking public office again. A verdict is expected on December 3.
The 68-year-old prime minister was not in court as Boccassini summed up the case for the prosecution, which is that Berlusconi bribed judges to block the 1985 sale of state-owned food company SME to his rival Carlo De Benedetti, boss of Italian food giant Buitoni.
Berlusconi "had magistrates from Rome on his payroll so they could put their good offices to work for his group," said Boccassini.
Boccassini called for the maximum sentence to be imposed on the prime minister at the end of an eight-hour summing up Friday.
Several of Berlusconi`s co-accused received lengthy jail sentences in a separate trial last year but have appealed.
Insisting that Berlusconi "had lied to the Italian people", she told the court the prime minister was guilty of bribing judges and should be convicted of corruption.
"The investigation has demonstrated that the statements made by Silvio Berlusconi do not correspond to reality," she said.
Reacting to the prosecutor`s demand, Sandro Bondi of Berlusconi`s ruling Forza Italia party called it "the death of justice".
However, former anti-Mafia magistrate turned opposition politician Antonio Di Pietro, said Berlusconi should resign.
"In any normal country, Berlusconi would resign. Obviously he won`t, because he doesn`t have a sense of political ethics or political morals."
Berlusconi has always maintained his innocence and said the trial was a politically-motivated attempt by left-leaning magistrates to destroy him. He has already ruled out resigning if convicted, and pledged to fight any adverse verdict tooth and nail with his battery of lawyers.
The affair surfaced in 1995, when Stefania Ariosto, partner of a lawyer close to Berlusconi, told Milan magistrates investigating Fininvest`s activities that judges in Rome had been bribed.
In his sole appearance in the court during the four-year trial, Berlusconi accused Ariosto of being "a pathological liar".
The prosecution investigation found the judge-bribing went beyond the SME case, and presented one 434,000 dollar bank transfer in Switzerland in 1991 as evidence of a full scale bribe scandal involving the media-magnate`s holding company.
Boccassini said the payment, which went from Fininvest to an account held by one of its lawyers, Cesare Previti, and immediately on to a third Swiss bank account held by Rome judge Renato Squillante, was "documentary proof" linking Berlusconi`s Fininvest with judge-tampering.
Berlusconi has faced a string of charges since he entered politics in 1993, and though an number have come to trial, he has almost always escaped conviction.
In 1994, he was sentenced to 33 months in prison for bribing financial police, but was acquitted on appeal. A successful appeal also accounted for efforts to jail him for fraud and false accounting in a separate case a year later. His government has since de-criminalized the charge of false accounting.
However, in this case, three of his co-defendants have already been convicted, pending appeals.
Squillante, chief magistrate in Rome at the time of the transaction, was convicted of corruption last year and received an eight-year sentence..
Previti, a close confidant of Berlusconi as well as being an MP in his Forza Italia party, was convicted of bribery and sentenced to five years imprisonment last year.
A defence minister in Berlusconi`s first government in 1994, Previti had already been sentenced to an 11-year sentence for bribing judges in another case.
Another lawyer, Attilo Pacifico, was sentenced to four years, while five others were acquitted.
Berlusconi was tried separately from his co-defendants due to his engagements as prime minister. In June last year, the case was suspended when the government passed a law granting him temporary immunity from prosecution while in office.
However, it resumed when the country`s highest court ruled that the law was unconstitutional.

11/12/2004 - 19:07 GMT - AFP