Originally posted by Don Rico:
Grazie Don_Michel! But what about 'the Fox' Giulio Andreotti??? The REAL boss of Italian political corruption. What was his famous motto? Oh yeah :[b]"Power wears out those who don't have it."[/b]
Do you mean this FOX:
Giulio Andreotti, the seven-times former prime minister who was acquitted two years ago of having Mafia ties, was due to go on trial again
Andreotti, 82, who has bounced back onto the political scene following his acquittal, is being accused on appeal by two women prosecutors in Palermo, Sicily. They will ask for him to be jailed for at least 10 years.
The original case against Andreotti was based on evidence by a number of Mafia informants who said he had met Mafiosi and even "godfathers".
The two prosecutors in that earlier case said the acquittal, made on the grounds that no crime had been committed, amounted to a "misapplication and travesty of justice".
They charged that the judges failed to take the evidence into account and followed a course of reasoning "way out of line" with that of the prosecution.
Andreotti was acquitted after a trial lasting four years.
But in the full account they gave of their decision last year, the judges claimed Andreotti had lied in court when he said he had not known the Salvo cousins, powerful Sicilian tax collectors who were connected to the Mafia.
The question of whether Andreotti knew the two men or not was considered crucial for the prosecution's case, since the Salvos were said to have been his channel to the Mafia leadership.
Despite his age and judicial concerns, Andreotti has returned to the political scene. A senator for life, he recently helped to form a moderate party based on old Christian Democrat ideals.
His name was recently mooted as a choice for foreign minister in a possible new conservative coalition government after next month's elections.
