Italian three-time former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi on Friday ended his one-year community service sentence for a tax fraud conviction.

Berlusconi was relieved of his duties helping the elderly and the disabled at a non-profit facility days earlier than planned because of his good behavior while serving his sentence, a judge in Milan said.

"The time spent with the sick, volunteers, health and social workers was a touching experience," Berlusconi said in a statement about his service at the facility in the town of Cesano Boscone.

For this reason, the statement said, the former Italian leader and media mogul said he intended to continue his commitment to serve in this capacity.

In 2013, the Italian supreme court rejected Berlusconi's final appeal against a verdict which sentenced him to four years in jail for inflating prices in the purchase of movie rights for his media company in a move to dodge taxes.

The verdict, which was commuted to one year under an amnesty law, was Berlusconi's first final guilty conviction in some 20 years of legal fights. Berlusconi, 78, was too old to go to jail under Italian legal practice, and thus was sentenced to performing social work once a week.

However, Berlusconi will likely be unable to run for Italian government or parliament, Piero Colaprico, an author and political columnist of la Repubblica national newspaper, explained to Xinhua.

"Firstly, Berlusconi has finished serving his social work term, but there must be a hearing officially declaring that his fraud verdict has become extinct," he said.

Secondly, Colaprico elaborated, the experience of Cesano Boscone was only a minor step in Berlusconi's judicial history.

"On Tuesday, Italy's supreme court will decide whether Berlusconi's Ruby trial has to be run again," he said about the case involving an underaged Moroccan prostitute who went by the alias Ruby Heartstealer. Last year, a Milan appeal court acquitted Berlusconi from charges of paying for sex with Ruby Heartstealer and then abusing his power to cover it up.

In addition, Colaprico went on saying, another investigation connected to the Ruby case is being carried out by Milan prosecutors over whether Berlusconi paid witnesses to give false testimony in the trial.

Berlusconi has been banned from holding public office until 2019 based on the so-called Severino law, adopted by the government of then prime minister Mario Monti in 2013.

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