Berlusconi heirs win appeal against ECB decision on Banca Mediolanum stake
ROME, Sept 19 (Reuters) -The European Central Bank was wrong to block Italy's former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi from keeping a 30% stake in lender Banca Mediolanum BMED.MI after a tax fraud conviction, the European Union Court of Justice ruled on Thursday.
The court annulled the ECB's decision, saying it "could not lawfully oppose Berlusconi's ownership" as EU laws on which the ECB's decision relied had not yet been adopted by Italy, and could not have retroactive effect.
In October 2014 the Bank of Italy ordered Berlusconi's investment vehicle Fininvest to sell a stake of just over 20% after the former PM was no longer considered fit to own more than 10 percent of a financial company due to his tax fraud conviction a year earlier.
The voting rights linked to the corresponding shares were immediately suspended.
The verdict on Thursday vindicated an appeal by Fininvest, and by the heirs of the late Italian politician and media mogul, against an opposite ruling by a lower EU court in 2022.
The lower court, which four years before said it alone had the power to rule on the legality of the ECB decision, upheld the central bank's 2016 decision to prevent Berlusconi from retaining his 30% stake.
Following Berlusconi's death in June 2023, his heirs asked the ECB and the Bank of Italy to lift the curbs on the full stake in the lender, which is worth about 2.5 billion euros ($2.79 billion) at current market prices.
Asset manager Banca Mediolanum was launched in 1997 - with no branches and the first to offer services over the phone and teletext - by Ennio Doris, a long-standing friend and financial partner of Berlusconi.
The ECB had no comment on the court's ruling and there was no immediate comment from either Fininvest or Banca Mediolanum.
($1 = 0.8951 euros)
Reporting by Alvise Armellini, additional reporting by Elvira Pollina and Gianluca Semeraro, editing by Giulia Segreti and Christina Fincher
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