London: Defending Finmeccanica’s jailed ex-chief executive officer Giuseppe Orsi, former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday said bribes were a necessary part of doing business globally.
“Bribes are a phenomenon that exist and it’s useless to deny the existence of these necessary situations,” he said in a TV interview. “These are not crimes. We’re talking about paying a commission to someone in that country. Why, because those are the rules in that country.”
He said probes by Italian prosecutors into contracts Italian firms sign abroad were a form of “economic suicide”.
“Everyone knows that as well as the tenders, agreements between governments are also involved,” Berlusconi said. Terming Orsi’s arrest “pure masochism”, he said it would hurt the prospects of other Italian businesses. “No one will negotiate with Eni or Enel or Finmeccanica anymore...” he said. “These are absurd moralisms,” he said. “If you want to make moralisms like that, you can’t be an entrepreneur on a global scale,” he said. AGENCIES
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