Rome -
Former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi was slated on Friday to perform his last visit to a centre for the elderly, as the community service he was ordered to perform following a tax fraud conviction nears its end.
The 78-year-old was handed a four-year jail term in 2013, but spared from prison because of amnesty laws and old age.
He started a one-year community service assignment in April, but was told last month that he could finish it early, on March 8, because of good behaviour.
As part of his duties, Berlusconi has been paying regularly on Friday visits to the Sacred Family Foundation, a Catholic centre near Milan for dementia sufferers.
He started going there on May 9, and once said he entertained patients by talking football and telling jokes.
With the formal end of his community service on Sunday, Berlusconi's movements will no longer be restricted.
Over the past months, he has been confined to sleeping at home, either in Milan or Rome, and subjected to an 11 pm curfew.
However, judges are expected to take another couple of months to certify the full remission of his sentence.
Until then, Berlusconi will remain under observation and he will continue to be barred from travelling abroad.
Berlusconi, who was expelled from parliament following his conviction, will also remain ineligible for public office until November 2019, unless an appeal he has filed against that restriction succeeds before the European Court of Human Rights.
The scandal-prone politician faces other legal challenges: Italy's top court is due to start deliberating on the “bunga bunga” case, where Berlusconi is accused of soliciting sex from a minor, on March 10.
In a first instance ruling in 2013, Berlusconi was handed a seven-year suspended jail sentence, but the conviction was quashed in a first appeal ruling a year later.
Top judges could issue guilty or innocent verdicts, or order a retrial.
Sapa-dpa