Corruption costs the Italian economy some €60 billion ($80.4 billion) a year, estimates Italy’s Corte dei Conti, a public body that monitors state finances. Yet quantifying the cost of corruption in an individual case can be a complicated task. That was the question at the heart of a recently decided landmark case pitting former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Fininvest SpA media holding company against rival Compagnie Industriali Riunite SpA (CIR), a diversified holding company owned by businessman Carlo De Benedetti. In September, Italy’s Corte di Cassazione, the country’s highest appeals court, agreed with two lower courts that it was indeed possible to put a price on the damages CIR had suffered when a judge was bribed in earlier litigation between Fininvest and CIR.
“The case was important because it was one of the first times corruption-related damages were assigned in Italy, and the amount of the damages awarded was significant,” says Paola Mariani, an international law professor with Milan’s Bocconi’s University. The appeals court set final damages owned by Fininvest to CIR at €494 million ($662 million), a reduction from the €750 million ($1 billion) originally stipulated in 2009 by the first court ruling in the case.
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