An Italian court threw out bribery charges against former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi yesterday under the statute of limitations, bringing the five-year trial to an end.

I just want to get out of here- prosecutor

Prosecutors had called for a five-year prison term for Berlusconi, who was accused of having paid off his former British tax lawyer David Mills to provide false testimony in his favour in two trials in the 1990s.

Judge Francesca Vitale spent three hours considering the verdict after defence lawyers presented their final arguments, but took less than a minute to tell a packed court room that she ruled that the case had run out of time allowed by law.

Prosecutor Fabio de Pasquale looked downcast and told waiting hordes of journalists: “I just want to get out of here”.

Berlusconi’s lawyers refused to comment. The media magnate, who has always protested his innocence, was not in court. He had left Rome for Milan yesterday morning, but had come to see his football team AC Milan play Juventus.

Despite his being convicted several times of corruption and false accounting in the past, all cases against Berlusconi have either been overturned or discarded when they expire after years of moving laboriously through Italy’s justice system.

Berlusconi had been accused of paying his offshore tax expert €445,000. Mills was tried in absentia, convicted in February 2009 and sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison.

The verdict was later upheld but the case against Mills finally expired in 2010, although judges stressed that they believed he was guilty of an act of “very serious” corruption.

Berlusconi did everything to put off a verdict against him in the Mills case, complaining that the judges had refused to listen to all the defence witnesses and were conspiring against him.

“The Mills trial is just one of numerous invented proceedings against me. In total, more than 100 legal procedures, over 900 prosecutors have busied themselves with me and with my company,” Berlusconi said ahead of the hearing.

“Two thousand six hundred hearings in 14 years, more than €400 million in fees for lawyers and consultants – these are impressive records not just on a global level but on a universal level, on a solar system level,” he said.

Berlusconi in particular criticised the prosecution’s “incredible thesis” that the crime was committed not when the money was allegedly given to the lawyer but when the lawyer began spending it two years later.

The prosecution had claimed the trial still had a few months left.

Although a conviction could have been a blow to Berlusconi’s prestige, the colourful ex-premier, 75, was never likely to go to jail because sentencing guidelines in Italy are very lenient for over-70s.

Berlusconi has been struggling with the law ever since entering political life in 1993 with his Forza Italia (‘Go Italy’) party.

Two decades of courtroom saga for Silvio Berlusconi

Main facts and figures of Silvio Berlusconi’s legal saga:

• 1994: Put on trial for bribing tax police, Berlusconi is eventually convicted in 1997 and sentenced to 33 months in prison. The case is overturned on appeal.

• 1995: Berlusconi is accused of financing the purchase of football player Gianluigi Lentini by his club AC Milan with a slush fund. The case expires in 2002, thanks to a law decriminalising false accounting passed by Berlusconi.

• 1995: Berlusconi is accused of tax fraud in the purchase of a luxury villa near Milan. The case expires under the statute of limitations.

• 1995: Accused of false accounting over his purchase of the cinema production group Medusa, Berlusconi is convicted and sentenced to 16 months in prison in December 1997. He is acquitted on appeal in February 2000.

• 1995: Berlusconi is charged with illegally financing the Italian Socialist Party through an offshore company. He is convicted and sentenced to 28 months in prison in July 1998 but the case runs out in October 1999.

• February 25, 2012: Judges in Milan throw out the case, citing the statute of limitations, at the end of a trial in which Berlusconi is accused of bribing his former British tax lawyer David Mills with €445,000 to provide false testimony in his favour in two previous court cases.

Berlusconi is also a defendant in three other trials:

‘Mediaset’ trial: Berlusconi is accused of artificially inflating the price of distribution rights for films sold and bought by companies belonging to his Mediaset business empire in order to hide revenue from tax authorities.

‘Rubygate’ trial: Berlusconi is accused of paying for sex with an underage prostitute nicknamed “Ruby the Heart Stealer”. Prosecutors say he also put pressure on police to free her from custody when she was arrested for stealing.

‘Unipol’ trial: Berlusconi is accused of violating official secrets after a newspaper belonging to his family published confidential transcripts of a conversation purporting to show shady dealings by a centre-left politician.