Italy's Berlusconi files for 1 year social work

Italian former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Friday filed a request to Milan prosecutors to do one year of social work rather than house arrest to serve a conviction for tax fraud at his television network, local reports said. The verdict, which came in August and was the first final conviction in two decades of fighting legal cases, was reduced from four years to one year by a 2006 pardon act. The 77-year-old media tycoon is expected to be expelled from the Italian Senate later this month after a special committee of the upper house last week voted to strip him of his seat following the guilty verdict. The panel's decision will need to be confirmed with a full vote of the Senate assembly in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Berlusconi is appealing other sentences in separate probes on paying a minor for sex and illegal use of wiretapping. The three-time premier has been tried in around 30 cases but he was never given a definitive conviction as verdicts have always either been overturned on appeal or the statute of limitations ran out. Berlusconi has always claimed to be the victim of left-wing magistrates. Last week, he failed in an attempt to bring down Prime Minister Enrico Letta's left-right government when some members of his center-right party disobeyed him for the first time ahead of a crucial confidence vote in parliament.