Rome, March 19 (IANS) Italy’s highest court Tuesday upheld a ban for former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi from holding public offices for two years, media reports said.

The ruling had been made by an appeals court in Milan last October after the highest court upheld a conviction for tax fraud of Berlusconi’s television network in August, according to Xinhua .

The Milan court had recalculated a five-year ban that the highest court said was miscalculated before sending it back to the Milan appeals court to be reassessed.

The tax fraud conviction, which was the first final guilty verdict for Berlusconi in two decades of fighting legal cases, also included a jail term which was reduced from four years to one year by a 2006 pardon.

Berlusconi has filed a request to Milan prosecutors to do one year of social work rather than house arrest to serve the verdict.