Berlusconi defends record on Mafia

Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi arrives at the EU council headquarters in Brussels November 19, 2009.

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's Silvio Berlusconi on Sunday defended his record in fighting the Mafia and vowed to hit back at the opposition press that reported he was being investigated in connection with a 1993 Mafia bombing campaign.

"If there's a person who by nature, sensitivity, mentality, background, culture and political effort is very far from the Mafia, it is me," the 73-year-old conservative prime minister and media mogul said in a statement.

"If there is a government that, more than any other, has made fighting the Mafia one of its clearest and coherent goals, it is my government," said Berlusconi.

New evidence from a Cosa Nostra mobster-turned-state witness has prompted prosecutors to reopen a probe into the Sicilian Mafia's bomb attacks in 1993 on Rome, Milan and Florence as part of its war on the Italian state.

Five people died in the Florence bomb, part of a campaign to scare the state into relaxing the harsh prison regime served by convicted mobsters. Mafiosi were jailed but a probe into links with politicians and business was dropped in 1998, then reopened this year when jailed mobster Gaspare Spatuzza turned informant.

Spatuzza has told magistrates, in evidence reported widely in the media and confirmed by court sources, that Berlusconi and Senator Marcello Dell'Utri were mentioned to him in connection with the attacks by a Mafia boss now doing life in jail.

Dell'Utri, a Berlusconi associate, has been convicted of association with the Mafia and sentenced to nine years in jail. On Friday December 4, the Palermo court looking into his appeal will hear Spatuzza at a high-security jail in Turin where he is held and newspapers said this could be damaging for Berlusconi.

But Florence's chief prosecutor said on Saturday the court was not investigating Berlusconi or Dell'Utri and the prime minister said such talk was "unfounded and insulting."

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni boasted this month there was "never a happier period in the fight against the Mafia" than under this government, with "eight Mafia arrests a day and the list of 100 most wanted mafiosi reduced by half" as well as 10,000 Mafia properties worth 5.3 billion euros ($7.9 billion) confiscated in 17 months.

"DIGNITY HURT"

Berlusconi's daughter Marina, who heads the family holding Fininvest that controls broadcaster Mediaset, announced on Saturday they would sue opposition newspaper La Repubblica -- controlled by a business rival, Carlo De Benedetti -- over an article that said Mediaset was "20 percent owned by the Mafia."

Berlusconi said he would "combat the press campaign by the La Repubblica-Espresso group whom I will ask to answer, in criminal and civil courts, for the damage done to the dignity of my person, my family and the company Fininvest."

His business interests are smarting from an October damages order of 750 million euros in favor of De Benedetti for bribing a judge in a 1990s publishing takeover battle.

The premier was stripped of his immunity from prosecution in October and trials against him are resuming. Next Friday should see the reopening of a Milan case against Berlusconi over a $600,000 bribe to British lawyer David Mills, who has already been sentenced to 4-1/2 years jail, pending appeal.

Last week Berlusconi warned of a plot by magistrates to bring down his government with false charges, which prompted President Giorgio Napolitano to call for the "spiral of rising drama" between the prime minister and the judiciary to end.

Berlusconi's lawyer Niccolo Ghedini says it is "legitimate for the prime minister to talk of judicial persecution." The prime minister says he has faced 109 trials and 200 million euros ($300 million) in legal fees since starting in politics 15 years ago.

(Writing by Stephen Brown; editing by Robin Pomeroy)