Milan: Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's four-year prison term for tax fraud was cut to one year Friday, a Milan court said soon after passing sentence.
Berlusconi is benefitting from a 2006 amnesty law, approved by the leftist government of the time, aimed at reducing prison overcrowding.
Earlier, the court convicted Berlusconi of tax fraud and sentenced him to four years in prison.
The conviction Friday was the media mogul’s first” other criminal probes and trials had ended in acquittal or were thrown out for statute of limitations.
Earlier in the week, Berlusconi had announced he wouldn’t run for a fourth term.
The 76-year-old media mogul wasn’t in the courtroom for the verdict on the case stemming from dealings in his Mediaset business empire.
Berlusconi's lawyers fiercely criticised his original sentence, saying they would appeal against the "incredible" verdict.
