Italian prosecutors have asked a judge to order Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and others to stand trial over alleged corruption involving TV broadcaster Mediaset, a judicial source said today.
The request followed a four-year investigation by Milan public prosecutors into claims of false accounting, tax fraud and money laundering in a disputed TV rights deal.
Mediaset is controlled by the Berlusconi family's holding company Fininvest. No one at the broadcaster was immediately available for comment. It has previously denied the accusations and said it has always operated within the law.
The prosecutors' request that Berlusconi and an unknown number of others should be charged in the case came at a delicate time for the prime minister.
He has just formed a new government after a split in his centre-right ruling coalition forced him to step down briefly last week. His alliance suffered a stinging defeat in regional elections earlier this month, and it faces the prospect of a general election by May 2006 that opinion polls show it could lose.
Mr Berlusconi, a self-made billionaire who created Italy's largest media empire, has stood trial for graft at least seven times. He has never received a definitive guilty verdict. He has accused prosecutors in Italy's financial capital, Milan, of leading a politically motivated witch hunt against him and his family.
Prosecutors also asked that Fedele Confalonieri, chairman of Mediaset and one of Mr Berlusconi's long-time business associates, be tried in the case, the judicial source said.
The investigation into Mr Berlusconi, Mr Confalonieri and 12 others closed in February, and the prosecutors had been expected to ask that they stand trial. A judge must now decide whether to order a trial.