MILAN — An Italian court sentenced ex- prime minister Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday to one year in jail over the publication by his family’s newspaper of a transcript of a leaked wiretap connected to a banking scandal in 2006.

The 76- year- old billionaire will not have to serve any jail time until the appeals process has been exhausted, and a higher court may still overturn the ruling.

The decision comes in the middle of a political impasse arising from last week’s election which left no party able to form a government on its own, although Berlusconi’s centre-right formation emerged as the second strongest in parliament.

Berlusconi is in the middle of a series of trials, with separate cases of tax fraud and paying for sex with an underage prostitute due to wind up this month.

“It is impossible to tolerate judicial persecution of this kind which has been going on for 20 years and which re-emerges every time there are politically complex moments in the political life of our country,” he said in a statement.

Berlusconi’s brother Paolo, publisher of the family- owned

daily, was sentenced to two years and three months in the same case, which centred on confidential wiretap transcripts related to a bank takeover which appeared in the newspaper.

The court awarded $ 107,046 in damages to Piero Fassino, who was head of the main centre-left party at the time of the incident and whose remarks were caught on the wiretap and published in the newspaper.

Late on Wednesday, Italy’s highest appeals court upheld a ruling clearing Berlusconi of tax fraud in connection with his Mediatrade broadcasting rights firm.