Bias charges won't stop Berlusconi trial - Judge Gandus says

A corruption trial against Silvio Berlusconi and British lawyer David Mills will go ahead in July despite the Italian premier's attempts to have it stopped by accusing the court of bias, the judge said yesterday.

The 71-year-old Prime Minister is charged with paying Dr Mills $600,000 in 1997, from alleged "secret funds" held by his media empire Mediaset, to withhold incriminating details of his business dealings. Both of them deny any wrongdoing. Mr Berlusconi's lawyers asked this week to have the presiding Milan judge, Nicoletta Gandus, removed. Mr Berlusconi said the court was "politicised and has rolled over and accepted the prosecution's arguments".

But Judge Gandus said yesterday the "the removal request does not stop the hearings from going ahead". The next hearing is due on July 7, with two further hearings that month. An appeals court will also hear the motion for the judge's removal next month.

Critics of the conservative premier say he has also tried to hold up the trial via a so-called "premier-saving" law approved by the Senate this week and now due for lower house scrutiny.

Mr Berlusconi loyalists have introduced an amendment to a crime-fighting Bill that would prioritise trials for violent crimes and Mafia cases and suspend for one year all trials for lesser offences, and most white-collar crimes, that took place before mid-2002.

The Berlusconi-Mills case would have expired earlier this year under the statute of limitations, but in January a Milan court effectively extended the deadline for two years.