From another scandal:
Berlusconi says, bribes are necessary for doing business globally
Press Trust of India, The Indian Express, Thu Feb 14 2013
London - Defending Finmeccanica’s jailed ex-CEO Giuseppe Orsi, Italy’s three-time former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi said Thursday that bribes are a necessary part of doing business globally.
“Bribes are a phenomenon that exists and it’s useless to deny the existence of these necessary situations,” Berlusconi said in a televised 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 was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.
Italian news agency ANSA quoted Berlusconi as saying that 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. “The fact that there is the risk of magistrates intervening, I consider to be economic suicide,” he added.
Terming Orsi’s arrest as “pure masochism”, Berlusconi said it will hurt the prospects of other Italian businesses. “No one will negotiate with Eni or Enel or Finmeccanica anymore... It’s pure masochism,” he said. Eni is an Italian oil major, while Enel is a power producer there.
“These are absurd moralisms,” the former Italian premier said. “If you want to make moralisms like that, you can’t be an entrepreneur on a global scale.”