ITALIAN PRIME minister Silvio Berlusconi seems headed for fresh judicial problems – at least according to the daily Corriere della Sera. The authoritative Milan-based newspaper reported yesterday that Bari-based magistrates are looking into allegations that a number of glamorous young women were offered money to attend parties at Mr Berlusconi’s private Rome and Sardinian villas.
According to Corriere, the information about the party invitations surfaced during phone taps that formed part of an investigation into healthcare clinics in Puglia. At the centre of the investigation is a private health services agency, Tecnohospital, run by two brothers, Giampaolo and Claudio Tarantini.
The phone taps reveal that a number of young women were offered money to attend parties in the prime minister’s private residences of Palazzo Grazioli in Rome and Villa Certosa in Sardinia.
Investigators must now establish whether the phone tap information is the result of exaggerated bragging or whether there may be grounds to press charges for “inducement to prostitution”, the newspaper says.
Underlining the seriousness of the allegations against the prime minister is an interview given to Corriere by Patrizia D’Addario, a young woman who at one point was set to run for Mr Berlusconi’s Freedom Party (PDL) in Bari local elections this month. She claims that she was invited to two different parties in Palazzo Grazioli last autumn.
Ms D’Addario was flown to Rome, picked up at her hotel in Via Margutta and then taken to Palazzo Grazioli in the company of Giampaolo Tarantini and two other (unnamed) women. She claims that the car in which she travelled had tinted windows and that she was told that her name for the night would be “Alessia”.
At the party, she found some 20 young women being wined and dined on pizza and champagne. After a while Mr Berlusconi, arrived. He chatted to his guests, told jokes, sang some songs and showed films of a recent meeting with US president George W Bush. Later that night, Ms D’Addario returned to her Rome hotel.
In her interview yesterday, she claims that Giampaolo Tarantini later told her that he would be paying her €1,000 rather than the agreed fee of €2,000 because she had not stayed the night at Palazzo Grazioli.
However, Ms D’Addario claims that she was invited back to the prime minister’s residence last November, on the night of the US presidential elections and that on the second occasion, she spent the night there. Furthermore, she claims that she has audio recordings of both parties, on which the prime minister’s voice can be clearly heard.
Not surprisingly, Mr Berlusconi angrily dismissed yesterday’s speculation calling it “lies and rubbish” and telling the TG Com website (owned by his Mediaset company): “Yet again, the newspapers are full of rubbish and lies. But I won’t be intimidated by these attacks – rather I will continue as always to work for the good of the country.”