This part of the portfolio was worth 860 billion lire at the end of last year.
Some insiders think the new offering will fail unless it is priced below 10, 000 lire.
This munificence was modest compared with the 33 billion lire it spent when celebrating its centenary in 1994.
The legislation requires that no more than 160 billion lire be spent, which would buy about 100, 000 vehicles.
Franco Piro, Sicily's head of finance, complains that Sicily is owed 3 trillion lire by the central government.
In the 1990s, Italy levied a tax on every bank account to stave off the collapse of its lire currency.
New mopeds with engines below 50cc would then qualify for a state handout of 300, 000 lire and larger two-wheelers for 500, 000 lire.
From 1978 to 1985, 93.9 billion lire (387 billion lire in today's money) flowed into the 22 companies, ostensibly from Mr Berlusconi.
First, 29.7 billion lire had been paid in cash, or cash equivalents.
According to the charges, AC Milan deposited 10 billion lire (5.1 million euros) in the Swiss bank account of Torino's president, Gianmauro Borsano.
Asked for a single piece of paper showing that his mother or anyone else had lent 10bn Turkish Lire he said: "I cannot reply".
BBC: Asil Nadir says doctors warned him against return to UK
Second, the investigators had found no extant supporting documents in the records of the trust companies, banks or holding companies for 20.6 billion lire.
The currency markets might greet an Italian rate cut by dumping lire, which would wreck Italy's hopes of joining the single currency in 1999.
Thus the risk premium on holding lire and pesetas would rise.
Each person can have a pre-paid card, which can be re-charged in 50, 000 lire blocks, up to a maximum of 500, 000 lire, when airtime runs out.
One company, Palina, ostensibly a third party, had sent 27.7 billion lire to the trust companies, which had then transferred this sum to the holding companies.
So the true source of the 93.9 billion lire that flowed into the 22 companies in 1978-85 remains a mystery that only Mr Berlusconi can solve.
For instance, when he sold shares in one of the holding companies to a Fininvest subsidiary for 165 billion lire, the funds bypassed the trust companies altogether.
Lotto alone, with about 40% of the 21.3 trillion lire turnover in legal betting and games of chance last year, brought in 2.5 trillion lire of tax revenues.
Fiat shares outperformed Peugeot's over the period when lire and francs are converted into euros at the rates that would have prevailed on January 1st 1997 (see left-hand chart).
Companies in Switzerland, where beneficial ownership is impenetrable, injected 4.1 billion lire (33.5 billion lire in today's money) in equity into the Italian companies responsible for Milano 2.
In 1997, a financier with links to the Mafia alleged to magistrates in Sicily that Mr Berlusconi had used 20 billion lire of Mafia money to build up his television interests.
Billions of lire have been set aside to drive a road-tunnel under the rim of the ancient fort of Castel St Angelo, to push traffic faster along the banks of the river Tiber.
In one of them, Raffaele Costa, a former government minister, tells the story of a young school janitor who found the job too arduous after 11 months and had, by the age of 47, collected 247m lire in pension payments.
应用推荐