A Milan court on Monday convicted Riccardo Bossi, eldest son of Italy's far-right Northern League party founder Umberto Bossi, of using 158,000 euros of party funds for his personal expenses.
The court found 36-year-old Bossi guilty of embezzlement of the party funds and handed him a suspended 18-month jail term. Prosecutors had requested a one-year prison sentence.
Bossi used the stolen cash to pay debts, university fees, the rent of an apartment, alimony to his ex-wife alimony, private TV packages, electricity, gas and veterinary bills and to hire cars, judge Vincenzina Greco said.
Bossi's lawyer, Francesco Maiello, slammed the ruling.
"I think the sentence is really too harsh and I believe there will definitely be grounds to file an appeal," he said.
When he called up the party and asked for funds, Bossi thought he was accessing his father's personal wealth, Maiello claimed.
"I think that any one of us, when we used to ask our father for money, we did not know where that money came from," Maiello told reporters.
The former rally driver, is now unemployed and broke, Maiello added.
"He's struggling and looking for a job," Maiello said.
Bossi's father, 74-year-old Umberto, and his half-brother Renzo, 27, are on trial over similar embezzlement charges, along with the Northern League's former treasurer Francesco Belsito and other party officials.
The anti-immigrant Northern League party, now led by Matteo Salvini, has close links to France's far-right National Front party. It originally advocated separatism for Italy's richer north.
