SILVIO BERLUSCONI made an impassioned defence against corruption charges yesterday, saying that he was “more equal” than others in the eyes of the law because he had been elected to run Italy.

Dabbing sweat from his brow in the sweltering Milan courtroom, the Italian Prime Minister also ridiculed accusations that he had bribed judges in a 1980s corporate takeover battle and said that his detractors were interested only in wrecking his reputation.

In what will almost certainly prove his last appearance in court before his trial is suspended, Signor Berlusconi also insisted that the case was harmful to Italy’s prestige. His supporters in the court chanted “Long live Silvio”, while opponents jeered and booed.

Signor Berlusconi, who takes over the rotating six-month presidency of the EU Council of Ministers on July 1, has rushed through parliament a new law granting him and Italy’s four other top state officials immunity from prosecution for as long as they hold office.

The immunity law will free the Prime Minister and media tycoon from the corruption charges which brought him down the last time he held power, in 1994, and which have returned to dog him since he was elected two years ago. Critics said the law was one of a series of measures introduced “with the sole purpose of saving the Prime Minister”. The law, which has already passed the Senate, is expected to pass the Lower House today.

Signor Berlusconi — the only Italian Prime Minister to stand trial while in office — refrained from repeating the attacks he made against Romano Prodi, the former Prime Minister and now President of the European Commission. He told the court last month that if anyone was guilty in the case, which relates to the alleged bribery of judges during the privatisation of a state-owned food company in the 1980s, it was Signor Prodi, who was in charge of Italy’s privatisation programme at the time and had undervalued bids to favour his allies.

Signor Berlusconi said he would have to work with Signor Prodi “almost every day during the six-month EU presidency . . . there are things I would say if I were not Prime Minister”. Instead, he turned his fire on Carlo De Benedetti, a rival entrepreneur and left-wing publisher who, he claims, Signor Prodi favoured, and on prosecution witnesses who were “compulsive liars”.

“I ask myself how the money of Italian citizens can be spent on a trial based entirely on inventions,” he told the packed hearing. “There is not a shred of evidence, an accusation, a document against me. And there is no motive.”

Signor Berlusconi said “tons of mud” had been thrown at him, not only by the prosecutors, but by “newspapers and television, in Italy and abroad”. He accused the prosecution of withholding from the defence a dossier which he said would prove his innocence. “If there is a trial against Silvio Berlusconi, then his lawyers have a right of access to all the papers,” he said, referring to himself in the third person. All citizens were equal, but “this citizen is slightly more equal than the rest, given that 50 per cent of Italians gave him the responsibility of governing the country”.

One supporter backed Signor Berlusconi’s description of his critics as “communists”, yelling that the “Stalinists” should “go to Cuba”. Last weekend the Castro regime staged mass protests against Italy and Spain for proposing EU sanctions against Havana over its treatment of dissidents, with marchers describing Signor Berlusconi as “another Mussolini”.

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