While the eyes of the world have been diverted by the events of 11 September, his MPs (many of whom are former employees in his media empire) have worked night and day to ensure a complicated reform of Italian law. Ostensibly the change is designed to encourage Italian tax evaders and black marketeers with substantial holdings abroad to repatriate their ill-gotten gains in Italy's banking system: no questions will be asked about where the money came from, nor will evidence of corrupt practices procured in other countries be admissable in Italian courts. But the last-minute revisions to the law, which is retrospective in nature, have a self-serving purpose: they will lead to the collapse of several high-profile bribery and corruption trials involving Berlusconi and his right-hand man, the MP Cesare Previti (former head of Berlusconi's media group).
But it isn't just Berlusconi who will benefit; so will terrorists and the Mafia. In order to save their leader and his friends, the Italian centre-right coalition has jeopardised 5,000 trials concerning paedophilia, money laundering, illegal immigration, arms and drug trafficking and much else besides. From now on, Italian judges and magistrates will find it hard to convict a terrorist who plants bombs in another country, because the evidence against will come from abroad. From now on, Mafiosi will be able to conduct their business abroad, put their dirty money in foreign bank accounts, and enjoy their life in Italy, secure in the knowledge that they won't be prosecuted. At a time when the world is gearing up to fight terrorism and international crime, Italy is heading in the opposite direction.

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