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Rome: Italy's highest court yesterday upheld the acquittal of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi on corruption charges, a lawyer said.
The ruling came just as Berlusconi stepped up his demands for early elections in a bid to return to power.
The conservative Berlusconi has served as opposition leader since losing the April 2006 vote to the centre-left coalition of Romano Prodi, the current premier.
In 2004, a Milan court cleared Berlusconi of charges that he bribed judges in connection with the sale of the SME state food conglomerate in the 1980s, before the media magnate entered politics.
The court cleared Berlusconi on one count and said the statute of limitations had run out on a second.
In April, an appeals court acquitted him on all charges, and yesterday's ruling upheld that verdict, said defence lawyer Piersilvio Cipollotti.
The SME case dates back to a decade before Berlusconi stepped into politics and took the lead of the conservative camp. He was then part of a group of magnates seeking to buy SME.
In a battle over the company, judges ruled in a 1985 case in favour of Berlusconi's group by blocking the company's sale to a rival industrialist. In the end, SME was sold to neither party, and the food group was later sold off in pieces.
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