Ornella Muti will pay fine for dinner with Putin

• 07.08.2017, 17:17
•  Other,  World

svoboda.org

An Italian court has found actress Ornella Muti lied and produced a fake sick note to evade a work commitment and fly to St. Petersburg instead to attend a dinner with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Newsweek reports.

The court of appeal in the city of Trieste handed the actress a suspended six-month prison sentence and a $570 fine, upholding a lower court’s verdict from two years ago.

The prison sentence will only be suspended, the court ruled, if the actress pays $34,000 in damages to the Verdi Theater in the northeastern city of Pordenone, which had to cancel her performance in December 2010 after she said she was too sick to go on stage.

The well-known Italian actress, who recently appeared in the 2012 Woody Allen movie To Rome with Love, was found guilty of aggravated fraud and having induced a physician to write a fake note on February 2015, landing her an eight-month suspended jail sentence and a $684 fine.

The judge Patrizia Botteri explained at the 2015 ruling that the actress had made a calculated decision to attend the charity dinner in Russia, as she would have gained from the media exposure of appearing along other stars such as Kevin Costner, Sharon Stone and Mickey Rourke.

According to the court, Muti requested the sick note, attesting to throat problems and ordering five of days rest, while she was already traveling to Russia.

Muti has always maintained her innocence; her lawyer even asked for the court to hear the Russian president as a witness in the case - a request the judge denied. After the first ruling, the actress said she could not afford to pay the $34,000 of damages to the theater.