Rome - The Italian Prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, appealed to the Italian media yesterday to restore his "tarnished" reputation after the highest court cleared the media magnate of bribery charges.
Mr Berlusconi was accused of bribing tax inspectors about 380 million lire (£200,000) in return for friendly audits for some companies within his media conglomerate Fininvest, Italy's largest privately-controlled company. The country's top appeals court on Saturday, in a ruling that cannot be appealed, upheld a lower court's decision that he had not bribed the officials.