Former Italian prime minister will reportedly be working part-time in a care home outside Milan

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister, is to serve his year-long sentence for tax fraud through part-time community service in a home for elderly people, a court has decided.

The ruling from the Tribunale di sorveglianza in Milan comes more than eight months after the billionaire leader of Forza Italia (FI), Italy's biggest centre-right party, was given his first definitive conviction in two decades of legal cat-and-mouse.

The 77-year-old will reportedly be working in a home run by the Sacred Family Foundation (Fondazione Sacra Famiglia) in Cesano Boscone outside Milan.

Judge Pasquale Nobile de Santis said in a statement that Berlusconi would work in the home "once a week and for a period of no less than four consecutive hours".

He would also be subject to limitations on his movements, added the judge.

"Berlusconi will not [without authorisation] be able to leave Lombardy but is authorised … to go to Rome to the residence indicated by him from Tuesday to Thursday, returning to his residence in Lombardy by 11pm on Thursday," she wrote.

In a statement, his lawyers Franco Coppi and Niccolò Ghedini welcomed the ruling as "balanced and satisfactory". Berlusconi is too old to have realistically faced jail, but he could have been placed under house arrest.

His main concern now will be establishing to what extent campaigning for the European elections in May will be possible under the court order.

Founded in 1896 by a Catholic priest, the Sacred Family Foundation says it offers help and rehabilitation services to people "with psychophysical disabilities and the non self-sufficient elderly".

Berlusconi was given a four-year sentence – immediately commuted to a year – for tax fraud at his Mediaset television empire last August. He has also been barred from holding public office for two years and was expelled from the Italian senate in the autumn.

But, as FI leader, he retains huge influence over the Italian political scene and is a crucial, if unpredictable, cross-party reform partner for the prime minister, Matteo Renzi. In a sign of his continuing relevance, Berlusconi dined with Renzi at Palazzo Chigi, the prime minister's official residence, on Monday night.

Berlusconi continues to reject all accusations of tax fraud and insists he is the victim of persecution by leftwing judges.