Silvio Berlusconi’s allies denied allegations by the son of a former mobster who said that the Sicilian Mafia had been involved

Silvio Berlusconi’s allies denied allegations by the son of a former mobster who said that the Sicilian Mafia had been involved in the founding of the Italian prime minister’s political party.

Massimo Ciancimino testified in court yesterday that his father, Vito, and Senator Marcello Dell’Utri, a founder of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, had together negotiated the mob’s backing before Berlusconi’s first election win in 1994.

“What he said about the party is totally false,” Dell’Utri said in an interview broadcast by Sky TG24. He said Palermo prosecutors are trying to undermine the government.

Ciancimino’s testimony, delivered during an unrelated trial in Palermo, is “an attempt to delegitimize a government that’s fighting the mafia,” Justice Minister Angelino Alfano said. While Berlusconi hasn’t commented, Italian newspapers including Corriere della Sera reported that he said he was “outraged.”

Dell’Utri, a former executive for Berlusconi’s media company, is appealing a 2004 conviction for aiding the mafia while working for Berlusconi. He was sentenced to nine years in prison. Neither Berlusconi nor Dell’Utri are defendants in the trial in which Ciancimino spoke.

Ciancimino was called to testify about the state’s alleged negotiations with the mob in the early 1990s in the trial of two police officials accused of aiding “boss of bosses” Bernardo Provenzano. The Carabinieri, or military police, allegedly told their men not to arrest Provenzano in 1995 when he attended a meeting with other mobsters. Provenzano was arrested in 2006 after spending 43 years as a fugitive.

Before entering politics with Forza Italia, which was merged into the People of Liberty party in 2008, Dell’Utri ran a Berlusconi-controlled advertising company from 1984 to 1995.

Prosecutors in Palermo sought Dell’Utri’s arrest in 1999 for corruption and mafia collusion. He was tried and convicted in 2004. During that trial another turncoat, Antonio Giuffre, testified that the mafia gave Berlusconi’s party electoral support in exchange for a promise of more lenient regulations on the incarceration of mob members. Berlusconi denied the charge