Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister, and David Mills, his former lawyer, were on Monday ordered to stand trial on corruption charges by a judge in Milan.

In a further deepening of the pair’s legal woes, the judge accepted the prosecutors’ request for a trial into allegations that Mr Berlusconi paid Mr Mills at least $600,000 after the lawyer had given favourable testimony at other trials of Mr Berlusconi in the 1990s.