ROME (AP) — For the first time in decades of criminal prosecution, a conviction against former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi finally stuck on Thursday, leaving the media mogul with a fouryear prison sentence for tax fraud with all of his appeals exhausted.

But it’s highly unlikely the man who long was Italy’s most powerful politician will actually serve out the sentence behind bars.

And while upholding his tax fraud conviction, Italy’s supreme court ordered another court to recalculate the duration of a ban on holding public office that lower courts had set at five years.

That could potentially reduce the time out of the limelight that threatens to interrupt, if not end, Berlusconi’s political career, already tarnished by a sex scandal.

Berlusconi, who, at 76, has dominated Italian politics for 20 years, remained defiant, if shaken. In a nine-minute video address, he denounced the sentence as “absolutely” baseless, saying it “deprives me of my freedom and political rights,” and insisted he is the innocent victim of “an incredible series of accusations and trials that had nothing to do with reality.”

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