Silvio Berlusconi’s most loyal political fixer, Marcello Dell’Utri is heading back to court aged 84. He is accused of hiding vast capital flows from the late tycoon that he was legally obliged to disclose.
Marcello Dell’Utri, the former Forza Italia senator and decades-long right-hand man to Silvio Berlusconi, has been sent to trial in Milan along with his wife Miranda Ratti over approximately €42 million he allegedly received from the late media magnate and his estate between 2014 and 2024.
The decision to send the pair to trial was taken by preliminary hearing judge Giulia Marozzi. The first hearing is set for 9 July before the second criminal division of the Milan Tribunal. The case had previously been held in Florence before being transferred to Milan in March 2025 following a jurisdictional challenge by Dell’Utri’s defence lawyers. They argued that the alleged conduct took place in Milan, where the former senator resides.
Dell’Utri, now 84, is accused of violating the Rognoni-La Torre anti-mafia law by failing to declare patrimonial variations in excess of €42 million received across eight bank transfers. The obligations arose directly from his 2014 conviction for external complicity in mafia association. Berlusconi, who died in June 2023 aged 86, left €30 million to Dell’Utri in his will.
Both defendants face between two and six years in prison if convicted. The statute of limitations has already put some of the contested transfers out of legal reach.
The ex-wife’s role
Miranda Ratti faces a separate but connected charge. Prosecutors allege that fifteen bank transfers totalling approximately €8 million were made by Berlusconi directly to Ratti. Investigators argue these transactions were designed to circumvent anti-mafia preventive measures.
Despite the couple having divorced in 2020, prosecutors contend that Ratti’s assets remained effectively at Dell’Utri’s disposal. She is accused of fraudulent asset registration which carries the same penalty range as her husband’s charge.
The Florence anti-mafia prosecutors’ office obtained a preventive seizure of €10.84 million from accounts linked to the pair in March 2024.
A conviction already behind him
The anti-mafia disclosure obligations at the heart of this case stem from Dell’Utri’s prior criminal history. He was definitively convicted in 2014 and served a jail term for external complicity in mafia association. The sentence meant that any significant movement in his assets required formal notification to the authorities, a requirement prosecutors say he systematically ignored across a decade of transfers from Berlusconi.
The case originated as a thread within a far larger and more contentious investigation: the long-running inquiry into the Mafia’s bombing campaign of 1993 and 1994, which targeted art and religious sites in Florence, Rome and Milan, killing a total of ten people. It was while monitoring Dell’Utri’s financial movements in connection with that probe that investigators first identified the undeclared Berlusconi flows.
The Shadow of 1993
The bombings of 1993 cast a long shadow over both men’s lives. They occurred at precisely the moment Dell’Utri was constructing Forza Italia, the centre-right political vehicle that would sweep Berlusconi to power in early 1994.
Berlusconi was on multiple occasions investigated for alleged complicity in the 1993 bombings. However, he was cleared at early stages of each inquiry, with prosecutors concluding there was no case to answer. Dell’Utri’s position, as his 2014 conviction makes clear, was judged differently by the courts.
The seizure of €10.84 million in March 2024 was ordered in the context of that broader investigation into those responsible for the Mafia bombings carried out between 1993 and 1994. Dell’Utri remained under investigation. It was during the monitoring of his financial activity over the preceding decade that the undeclared transfers came to light.
The Florence case against Dell’Utri in relation to the bombings remains open. The jurisdictional transfer of the financial charges to Milan effectively separated the two threads, with prosecutors in both cities now pursuing parallel lines.
The first hearing is scheduled for 9 July.
