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  Italy's Former premier Silvio Berlusconi has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud at his private TV network company Mediaset .
Judge Fabio Paparella sent 13 others to trial, including Mediaset Chairman Fedele Confalonieri and British corporate lawyer David Mills, the estranged husband of Britain's Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell; and several top former officials at Berlusconi's Fininvest family holding company .
For Berlusconi the most serious charge is tax fraud which carries a sentence of up to 6 years .
The trial, following a four-year investigation, will begin in Milan on November 21, judicial sources said . The defendants face charges ranging from tax fraud, false accounting and embezzlement to money laundering .
For Berlusconi the most serious charge is tax fraud which carries a sentence of up to 6 years .
The defendants all deny wrongdoing .
There was no immediate response from Berlusconi, Mills or Mediaset .
The case centres on Mediaset's purchase of TV rights for US films before 1999, done through two offshore firms .
Prosecutors believe that the purchase costs of US films were artificially inflated, allowing Mediaset to avoid tax amounting to almost 125 billion old lire. They also say a slush fund was created for Berlusconi and his family. Mills advised and acted for Berlusconi, a billionaire media mogul, for more than 20 years. He allegedly set up two off-shore companies for Berlusconi in the early 1990s .
Milan prosecutors have also asked that Berlusconi and Mills be sent to trial in a separate corruption case . They suspect Berlusconi of having bribed the lawyer to protect him in two previous corruption trials .
Mills is alleged to have received $600,000 for not revealing details of Berlusconi's media empire
Prosecutors say Mills, who separated from his wife earlier this year, received $600,000 from Berlusconi as payment for not revealing details of the Italian centre-right leader's media empire in two court cases .
Berlusconi and Mills deny wrongdoing, insisting that Mills received the money from Neapolitan shipping magnate Diego Attanasio .
Berlusconi, who is Italy's richest man, has repeatedly accused Milan prosecutors of hounding him for political reasons .
Over the past decade, he has been at the centre of numerous corruption investigations into his vast business empire .
He denies all wrong-doing and has never received a guilty verdict .
In some cases he has been cleared because of the statute of limitations or changes to the law introduced by his government, which lost power in the April general election .
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