ROME - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and British lawyer David Mills, the husband of a British government minister, were placed under investigation Tuesday as part of a probe into tax evasion, law enforcement sources said.
Berlusconi, owner of Italy's dominant media group Mediaset, is suspected of bribing judges to obtain legal rulings in favor of his company.
Mills, one of Berlusconi's lawyers and the husband of British Culture Minister Tessa Jowell, is suspected of providing false testimony, the source added.
Italian authorities are investigating the purchase and resale by Mediaset of broadcast rights and have received testimony from several people against Berlusconi concerning tax evasion.
One of those to provide testimony against Berlusconi was Mills.
Berlusconi and 13 other people are suspected of funneling more than 280 million euros (365 million dollars) out of Mediaset to his children Piersilvio and Marina through two offshore companies, Aceent and Timor.
The economic beneficiaries of the companies Accent and Timor were Marina and Piersilvio Berlusconi, Mills said according to the minutes of his testimony published in the Corriere della Sera daily.
Mills said he handled the documents to create the companies on the orders of Livio Gironi, the accountant of Finivest, Berlusconi's holding company that owns Mediaset and other companies.
He told investigators he knew that Gironi was directly tied to Berlusconi, and handled his personal finances. Mills said Gironi told him that the children were the beneficiaries of the companies but that their management was to always be cleared with Berlusconi.
The elimination of inheritance taxes was one of the first measures undertaken by Berlusconi's government after winning the 2001 parliamentary election.
03/22/2005 20:49 GMT