Silvio Berlusconi faced calls to resign yesterday when a judge ruled that David Mills, the British tax lawyer, had given false testimony at two corruption trials to protect the Italian Prime Minister and his business empire.

Mr Berlusconi, 72, announced that he would appear before Parliament to clear his name. “It is simply an outrageous verdict, contrary to reality, and I am convinced that the appeal judgement will show it,” he said.

The disclosure that Mills had sought to shield the Prime Minister from corruption charges increased the pressure on Mr Berlusconi as he faced continued calls to explain his relationship with an aspiring 18-year-old model.

The judges sentenced Mills, the estranged husband of Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, to 4½ years in prison in February. He denies wrongdoing and is appealing against the verdict.

In their 400-page reasoning, released yesterday, the judges said they had concluded that Mills was guilty because the evidence showed that he had given false testimony in two trials in 1997 and 1998 to shield Mr Berlusconi and his Fininvest company from charges relating to the purchase of US film rights, and to “protect Berlusconi’s economic interests”.

They said that Mills had accepted a bribe of $600,000 (£388,000) to act “as a false witness” and “to allow Silvio Berlusconi and his Fininvest group impunity from the charges or, at least, to keep their huge profits”.

The judges wrote: “The artificial, opaque and sophisticated way in which the money was transferred to Mills’s accounts itself indicates the illegality of the whole operation.” Mr Berlusconi was a co-defendant with Mills but the case against him was suspended after he pushed a law through Parliament in July last year giving himself immunity from prosecution, together with the three other holders of the top offices of state.

The Italian Constitutional Court has yet to rule on whether the law is valid and it is due to begin hearings in July. Federico Cecconi, Mills’s Italian lawyer, declined to comment.

Massimo Donadi, of the centre-left opposition party Italy of Values, said that Mr Berlusconi should either repeal the immunity law or resign. He said that if Italy had been a “normal country” Mr Berlusconi would by now have been forced to resign anyway under pressure from the Opposition, the press and public opinion. “Anyone who is even remotely suspected of having committed such a serious offence should step down,” he added.

Antonello Soro, of the Democratic Party, the main opposition party, said that the Mills case cast “a heavy shadow of suspicion” over the Prime Minister. He called on Mr Berlusconi to repeal the immunity law and present himself in court in the normal way to prove his innocence.

Daniele Capezzone, a spokesman for the People of Liberty (PdL), the ruling centre-right party, said that Nicoletta Gandus, the presiding judge in the case, was biased against Mr Berlusconi and the sentence was a politically motivated blow against a freely elected government.

Mr Berlusconi’s second wife, Veronica Lario, has asked for a divorce after the Prime Minister attended the 18th birthday of Noemi Letizia, an aspiring model and actress from Naples, who calls him Papi.

Osvaldo Napoli, the deputy head of the PdL faction in the Lower House, said that opponents were trying to attack Mr Berlusconi over the Mills case because the “assault” over the Noemi Letizia affair had failed. “To adapt von Clausewitz, in Italy justice is the continuation of the political struggle by other means, “ he said. In February the Milan court also ordered Mills to pay ¤250,000 (£220,000) in damages for “harming the reputation of the Italian Prime Minister’s office”.

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