ITALIAN PRIME minister Silvio Berlusconi has defiantly defended himself against allegations that he spent the night with call girl Patrizia D’Addario in his Rome residence last November.
In an interview with weekly gossip magazine Chi, which is owned by his own Fininvest Group, the prime minister claims that he has been the victim of a plot. "There is someone behind this Bari investigation who gave this woman D'Addario very precise instructions and a lot of money," he said.
Mr Berlusconi goes on to deny that he has ever paid for sex in his life, saying: “I’ve never paid for a woman. I’ve never understood what satisfaction there could possibly be without the pleasure of conquest”. Asked about Ms D’Addario, the prime minister implies he met her but had no idea she was a call girl, saying: “If I suspected . . . I would steer a thousand miles clear of them.”
In an interview with Corriere Della Seralast week, Ms D'Addario claimed that last autumn she was twice engaged by the businessman Giampaolo Tarantini to spend the night with Mr Berlusconi. On the second of these two occasions, November 4th, the night of the US presidential election count, she stayed the night with the prime minister. She claims to have taken photographs inside Mr Berlusconi's Rome residence, Palazzo Grazioli, while she also has audio recordings of her night with Mr Berlusconi.
Ms D’Addario told her story to Corriere after it emerged that Bari-based investigators had come across her name during an investigation into healthcare contracts.
While listening to wire taps of brothers Giampaolo and Franco Tarantini, investigators heard the brothers recount how they had organised for 42-year-old Ms D’Addari to spend the night with the prime minister.
In his interview with Chi, Mr Berlusconi admitted he never "frisks" guests at his villas, adding that if some of them then abuse his "goodwill", then that was their failing, not his.