Helicopter scandal: Bribes part of doing business globally, Silvio Berlusconi says

LONDON: Defending Finmeccanica SpA’s jailed ex-chief executive officer Giuseppe Orsi, Italy’s three-time former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday said bribes were 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,” 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. “The fact that there is the risk of magistrates intervening I consider to be economic suicide,” he said.
Terming Orsi’s arrest “pure masochism”, Berlusconi said it would hurt the prospects of other Italian businesses. “No one will negotiate with Eni or Enel or Finmeccanica anymore... It’s pure masochism,” he said.
“These are absurd moralisms,” he said. “If you want to make moralisms like that, you can’t be an entre-preneur on a global scale,” Berlusconi said.