Silvio Berlusconi Wiretaps

[ed.  This reads like something out of the Onion, with a kicker by Putin at the end.  Gives whole new meaning to the term "Prime" Minister.]

by Tom Kington

Magistrates investigating an alleged prostitution ring in Italy have published wiretaps in which Silvio Berlusconi boasts of spending the night with eight women and complains that meetings with Gordon Brown and the Pope are interfering with his partying.

The wiretaps were released at the conclusion of an investigation into entrepreneur Gianpaolo Tarantini, who is accused of paying women to sleep with Berlusconi, 74, at his homes in 2008 and 2009. The Italian prime minister is not under investigation, although the wiretaps throw doubt on Berlusconi's claims that he has never paid for sex.

"They are all well provided for," Berlusconi tells Tarantini of the girls passing through his Rome residence in one of the thousands of recorded conversations released, which filled Italian newspapers on Saturday.

In another conversation, a woman named Vanessa Di Meglio sends a text from Berlusconi's residence to Tarantini at 5.52am asking "Who pays? Do we ask him or you?"

Tarantini first made the headlines through the revelations of prostitute Patrizia D'Addario, who claimed Tarantini recruited her to have sex with Berlusconi. A second scandal has erupted over Berlusconi's parties at his villa near Milan, with the prime minister on trial accused of paying underage Moroccan dancer Karima El Mahroug for sex.

The newly published wiretaps give startling insight into Berlusconi's sexual appetites. "Last night I had a queue outside the door of the bedroom… There were 11 … I only did eight because I could not do it anymore," Berlusconi told Tarantini in 2009. "Listen, all the beds are full here … this lot won't go home, even at gunpoint."

Berlusconi, who boasted to one TV showgirl that he was only "prime minister in my spare time", told Tarantini in September 2008 that he needed to reduce the flow of women since he had a "terrible week" ahead seeing Pope Benedict, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and Gordon Brown. Berlusconi has long insisted that his private parties are informal but elegant affairs, that extend only as far as joke telling and songs, but is revealed on the tapes as putting pressure on Tarantini and his associates to conjure up beautiful female guests.

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