Key Berlusconi aide jailed for colluding with Sicilian Mafia

One of Silvio Berlusconi's closest colleagues, a senator and a founding father of his party Forza Italia, has been sentenced to nine years in jail for colluding with the Sicilian Mafia.

The conviction of Marcello dell'Utri came after a trial in a bomb-proof Palermo bunker lasting more than seven years and a record-breaking 13 days of deliberations by the trial judges. And it came one day after Mr Berlusconi himself avoided a jail sentence by a whisker, being found "responsible" for bribing a Roman judge but not guilty because of the statute of limitations.

The Italian Prime Minister declined to comment on the verdict. But the political shockwaves that were muffled by Friday's ambiguous verdict in Milan are already rumbling round Italy again.

The lives and careers of Mr Berlusconi and Dell'Utri have been closely and mysteriously entwined for 30 years. Mr Berlusconi was a thrusting, fiercely ambitious Milanese property developer and Dell'Utri a football-mad Palermo bank employee when their destinies first became entangled. In 1974 Mr Berlusconi prevailed on the Sicilian to come to Milan with him to be his "special secretary". What was it about Dell'Utri that made him the man for such a job? What were his duties?

The 1970s were a time of deep anxiety for anybody in Italy who was becoming conspicuously rich, as Mr Berlusconi was: Mafia kidnappings were a routine occurrence. In 1974 he was given good reason to believe that his children were at risk, and sent the whole family to Spain for a period to be out of harm's way.

The hiring of Dell'Utri, it is claimed, was one step towards reaching a permanent understanding with the Mafia. Dell'Utri was not a Mafioso himself, and has never been accused of such. But he knew people who were - among them Gaetano Cina, owner of a laundry but covertly also a member of the Mafia. (Cina yesterday received a seven-year jail sentence for working to the benefit of the mob.)

Over the years, Dell'Utri cemented rock-solid connections. Mr Berlusconi even promoted him to headof Publitalia, his advertising company. But Dell'Utri was "the ambassador of Cosa Nostra in Milan" who, when necessary, engineered "direct and personal" meetings between the rising billionaire and top Sicilian gang bosses to make sure the two sides understood each other. That included annual payments to the mob from the Berlusconi holding company, Fininvest.

Italy's long post-war political stasis, which saw the Christian Democrats dominating government for more than 40 years, brought with it immense institutionalised corruption. But in 1992 came the eruption of the bribery scandal known as "Tangentopoli", and the Mafia knew that if the established political parties fell, they would need to make friends with whoever took their place.

In 1993, Mafia bosses met in Sicily to decide whether to support a proposed secessionist party, Sicilia Libera, or the new national party fresh-minted by Mr Berlusconi, Forza Italia. They decided to go with the latter. At the general election of 2001, Forza Italia won an unprecedented clean sweep of Sicily's 61 constituencies.

Sandro Bondi, Forza Italia's national co-ordinator, insisted yesterday that Dell'Utri was innocent: "I am absolutely sure he will be cleared on appeal."