An episode of the Report investigative journalism show broadcast Sunday night by the third channel of State broadcaster RAI focusing on probes connected to late three-time ex-premier and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi was garbage, his daughter Marina Berlusconi said on Monday.
"Report's episode last night dedicated to Silvio Berlusconi belongs to the category of the worst media-judicial garbage", said the Fininvest holding company and Mondadori publishing house president, the late premier's eldest daughter.
Marina Berlusconi said the episode "rummaged for nearly two hours in a dustbin of unconnected, illogical charges that have already been denied 1,000 times, even using parts of previous shows and giving voice to discredited people".
She said it "attempted to resume defaming, paradoxical accusations" regarding the alleged relationship between Berlusconi and organized crime.
The allegations are "a quarter of a century old and have all been regularly buried as part of multiple cases that have been shelved", said Marina Berlusconi of the episode.
The show on Sunday night looked into Silvio Berlusconi's financial and political empire and the role of his longtime aide, ex senator Marcello Dell'Utri, in a "story on the relationship between politics, the mafia and businesses which continues to raise questions on the recent past of our country", said Report.
Berlusconi, who died aged 86 in June 2023, had on several occasions been probed, and cleared, for alleged complicity in mafia bombings in 1993 that hit art and religious sites in Florence, Rome and Milan killing a total of 10 people, just as Dell'Utri was set to create the mogul's centre right political party Forza Italia which swept him into power for the first of three terms as premier in early 1994, defeating a post-Communist-led alliance that had seemed poised to grab power in the post-Bribesville vacuum.
In all those 1993 bombing probes Berlusconi was cleared at initial stages of investigation as prosecutors judged he had no case to answer.
Former senator Dell'Utri, however, is stiil under investigation in those cases, has also served seven years for external complicity in mafia association and Report said "his intermediation between the leadership of Cosa Nostra and Berlusconi was confirmed by a definitive sentence".
The programme also again delved into the allegedly murky origins of Berlusconi's business fortunes which mafia turncoats have in the past claimed were due to alleged links with the Sicilian mafia, claims that again have never been proven.
Berlusconi's many supporters have always angrily denied suggestions he got seed money from Cosa Nostra to enable him to start out as a property developer in Milan before founding Italy's first commercial TV empire.
Forza Italia said in a note issued Monday that "it is extremely grave that, last night, Italians watching the public broadcaster were subjected to a spate of cowardly lies built as part of a violent and partisan political attack".
The note added that the television program used "an artificial reconstruction of past judicial proceedings and of ongoing investigations that have nothing to do with Forza Italia's political activity, trying to influence in a deplorable way the opinion of millions of citizens".
photo: Marina Berlusconi at her father's funeral on June 14, 2023
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