March 13, 1991

A Milan appeals court today indicted Carlo de Benedetti, the financier and computer executive, on charges of complicity in the bankruptcy of Banco Ambrosiano, Italy's largest banking scandal. No trial date was set. In April 1989, lower court judges, after investigating the 1982 collapse of Italy's largest private bank, indicted 35 people but cleared Mr. de Benedetti, who heads Ing. C. Olivetti & Company, the Italian computer company, of wrongdoing. A prosecutor appealed the decision.

For trendier Japanese, European flair is in these days, while Americana has lost in luster. But few of the recent Euro-fads have swept Tokyo as thoroughly as tiramisu, which has been transformed from a chic dessert to a marketing phenomenon packaged as candy and even dispensed from vending machines. This is a society closed to many things, as trade negotiators often assert, but open to trends more than most outsiders realize. In the last few years, as the traditionally penurious Japanese have been urged by their Government to spend some of the vast wealth that trade surpluses and a booming economy are depositing here, luxury goods with a foreign air have been snapped up with ferocious energy.

Money spent by real-estate developers, city contractors, unions and other interest groups to lobby New York City government rose sharply last year, and a prime beneficiary was a lobbyist who is a longtime friend and tennis partner of Mayor David N. Dinkins. A report released yesterday by the City Clerk, Carlos Cuevas, showed that lobbyists reported receiving nearly $8.5 million last year, an increase of about a third over the amount reported in 1989. About 70 percent of the payments went to only 10 firms.

OPEC decided today to cut oil production by 5 percent, or about a million barrels a day, which several officials of the group said should push prices higher. But underscoring the tension in two days of talks here, Algeria and Iran expressed reservations about the plan in the final communique, and officials from those countries complained that the output cuts were too small to lift oil prices to OPEC's target of $21 a barrel. OPEC oil has fallen to $17.74 a barrel on average, in part because of the allies' quick success in the war against Iraq.

The last defendant in the Bensonhurst case was acquitted of a murder charge but convicted of lesser counts yesterday, ending a series of problem-plagued trials in Brooklyn. Of the seven defendants whose trials were completed earlier, one was convicted of murder, three were convicted of lesser charges and three were acquitted of all charges.