Berlusconi faces tough challenge

Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire media baron and former premier, sometimes quipped that he was running out of money after two decades of steadily paying millions of euros to a stable of Italy's leading lawyers to defend him in a raft of criminal cases.

The team earned its keep. Until now he has always been acquitted or they have kept the case running so long that the statute of limitations has expired.

This time, though, Berlusconi has reached his final appeal and today could see Italy's highest criminal court uphold a tax fraud conviction stemming from a sale of film rights. Though he is unlikely to serve any of a four-year prison term, a five-year ban on holding public office would derail his career as Italy's unchallenged conservative leader.

With his back to the wall, Berlusconi for the first time has reached beyond his trusted legal team, turning to the man known as the high court 'magician', Franco Coppi, famed for zeroing in on the kind of technicalities that could persuade the criminal tribunal of last resort to toss out the conviction earlier this year by a lower-level appeals court.

Coppi has a track record - he won acquittals for Giulio Andreotti in the late politician's sensational trials for allegedly consorting with the Mafia.

OUTSTANDING ATTORNEY

Coppi is "like a magician who can pull a rabbit out of a hat", said Alessia Sorgato, a Milan-based attorney, who has argued alongside him in the Court of Cassation in Rome.

If the court upholds the conviction, even if the prison sentence is suspended, Berlusconi will be immediately stripped of his Senate seat and barred from running for any election. If that happens, some of his loyalists have warned, they will withdraw support in Parliament for Premier Enrico Letta's fragile coalition government, a development that could spook financial markets just as Italy tries to shake off a stubborn recession.