(Rex) Patrizua D'Addario said Silvio Berlusconi invited her to join him in the shower
June 28, 2009 - From The Sunday Times
In typically flamboyant style, Silvio Berlusconi has invited the world’s press on board Europe’s largest cruise ship tomorrow to hear him announce his plans for hosting next month’s G8 summit.
Italy’s billionaire prime minister — a former cruise ship crooner — has been trying to portray himself as a statesman dedicated to solving the global economic problems. But his efforts have been undermined by fresh disclosures about his alleged night with a prostitute and explicit telephone conversations with a fixer who paid beautiful young women to attend his parties.
Patrizia D’Addario, 42, a former actress from Bari in southern Italy, says she spent the night of November 4, when Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, at Palazzo Grazioli, Berlusconi’s Rome residence. She described the experience: “I never slept . . . He was tireless, a bull.”
Berlusconi, 72, has branded her account “trash and lies”, saying he did not remember her. He had never paid a woman for sex, he explained, adding: “I never understood what the satisfaction is when you are missing the pleasure of conquest.”
Accounts given to acquaintances and prosecutors led to an investigation into the alleged fixer, Giampaolo Tarantini, 34, a Bari businessman. He is suspected of abetting prostitution.
D’Addario described a dinner party that lasted until 3am and what followed. The other guests at the imposing Palazzo Grazioli were Tarantini and two young women — Barbara Montereale, 23, a model, and Lucia Rossini. After the dinner, Berlusconi led D’Addario and the two other women to another room.
“Do you remember how he caressed me while we were on the sofa? And how he caressed you and looked at me?” D’Addario asked Montereale in a telephone call recorded on June 7.
Montereale replied: “It was disgusting, he did everything in front of the bodyguards.”
Berlusconi asked D’Addario to stay and told the other two to leave. Photographs allegedly taken in Berlusconi’s bathroom by Montereale and Rossini before they left, in which they laughingly pose with a hairdryer, are timed 3.57am.
According to D’Addario, Berlusconi led her to a four-poster bed with white drapes and quilt which he said were a gift from Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister. She said he took half-a-dozen ice-cold showers during the night and she joined him at his request.
At one point D’Addario later told a friend: “He suddenly stopped moving and I thought to myself, thank God, he’s fallen asleep. But it didn’t last.”
D’Addario confided she had felt embarrassed when a staff member walked into the bedroom in the morning with a suit for the prime minister, reminding him he was due to make a statement about Obama’s victory. Berlusconi told her to wait because he wanted to have breakfast with her.
While D’Addario waited, she went to the bathroom and took photographs. She later switched her recorder on and the tape captured the voice of a man asking: “Do you want tea or coffee?” She left the residence at about 11am.
On her return to Bari that afternoon, D’Addario also recorded a call on her mobile phone. “Bambina mia \!” Berlusconi greeted her. He asked her why she sounded as though she had a hoarse voice and she explained: “It was the showers.”
D’Addario, who has a 13- year-old daughter, has given prosecutors six audio tapes, one of which was allegedly recorded that night, and which include intimate details; she also filmed the bedroom with her mobile phone.
She had already recorded parts of a dinner party at the same residence two weeks earlier which, she says, she was paid £850 to attend.
Telephone taps for the investigation into Tarantini include dozens of explicit conversations in which Berlusconi talks to him about politics, parties and above all women, the magazine L’espresso reported on Friday. Berlusconi described what kind of women — down to hair colour and vital statistics — he wanted to invite to Rome and his Villa Certosa in Sardinia.
The conversations were often coarse, with Berlusconi chatting about what had happened on party nights. In a video on the magazine’s website he wears a white dinner jacket at a Villa Certosa party on August 11, 2008, attended by some 40 guests, many of them young women. Tarantini sits opposite the prime minister.
One of the guests, Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran, sings Ordinary World to shrieks from the women. Berlusconi then sings himself. The video also shows scantily dressed young women on merry-go-round horses in the estate’s grounds.
In an interview with The Sunday Times last week, Montereale denied doing “anything erotic” at Berlusconi’s home. “Tarantini paid me for going to the party as a hostess, not as an escort girl,” she said.
She has said that Berlusconi gave her £8,500 as a gift after a party in Sardinia in January because she was struggling to make ends meet.
Prosecutors have so far questioned some 20 women who are understood to have taken part in five parties at Berlusconi’s Rome residence and at least two in Sardinia.
The prime minister exuded confidence last week, saying he had no plans to change. “The Italians want me. I have a 61% popularity rating. They want me because I’m kind, generous, sincere, loyal and I keep my promises,” he said. Three weeks ago he had boasted that private surveys showed 75% of Italians approved of him.
In his first admission that he may have made a mistake, he said: “Unfortunately we invited the wrong person and he in turn invited the wrong person. But that happens to hundreds of people.”
In an interview with the newspaper Il Giornale yesterday, Tarantini apologised to Berlusconi and said he had no idea D’Addario was a prostitute. He took beautiful women to Berlusconi’s parties only “to look good”, paying no more than their expenses, he added.
The scandal is an embarrassment to Berlusconi as he prepares for the G8 summit on July 8-10. The revelations about his private life have weakened his political position in Italy and although there is no immediate threat, allies in his centre-right coalition are privately daring to contemplate a “post-Berlusconi” era.
Insiders say Gianni Letta, Berlusconi’s undersecretary and key lieutenant, has distanced himself from the prime minister and has for several months declined his invitations to dinner.
“Berlusconi has turned into the opposite of King Midas: he dirties everything he touches,” a disaffected associate said.
The disclosures have prompted a rare public show of disapproval from within the Catholic church, with Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the Italian bishops’ conference, admonishing in a homily: “Beware of the man who, inebriated by his desire for greatness, deludes himself into thinking he can be omnipotent and twists moral values.”
Aides to the prime minister say he is focusing on presenting a “can-do” image at the G8 and has drawn comfort from leaders, including Nicolas Sarkozy, who have agreed to tour the earthquake-hit city of L’Aquila with him.
James Walston, a professor of international relations at the American University in Rome, believes that Berlusconi will survive in office.
“Italians don’t really care about his private life — what matters to them is whether he gets the economy going again,” Walston said.
“But the body language at the G8 photocall will be pretty interesting: the other leaders will take one look at him and step back, as if he’s got a big wart on his face. I really don’t expect Obama to let Berlusconi grab him by the shoulder and pose next to him with big grins on their faces. And if he invites leaders to his Sardinian villa, as he loves to do, they’ll say, ‘Thanks, but no thanks’.”
Deal Maker
Giampaolo Tarantini, the businessman at the centre of the scandal, used his friendship with Silvio Berlusconi to obtain access to the prime minister’s brother and a junior minister for a client of his lobbying firm, prosecutors suspect.
After setting up CG Consulting, an events and public relations company, last November, he obtained a £128,000-a-year contract from Enrico Intini, chairman of a company involved in environmental protection.
According to Intini, Tarantini secured two meetings for him with Berlusconi’s brother Paolo, owner of the Milan newspaper Il Giornale. Intini wanted help in testing some equipment in Lombardy and reportedly hoped that Paolo could influence local officials.
Tarantini also engineered a meeting for him with Guido Bertolaso, junior secretary for civil protection.
Tarantini denied that he had benefited from his relationship with Berlusconi. “I never talked with him about my companies,” he said.
John Follain - June 28, 2009
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6590890.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1
In typically flamboyant style, Silvio Berlusconi has invited the world’s press on board Europe’s largest cruise ship tomorrow to hear him announce his plans for hosting next month’s G8 summit.
Italy’s billionaire prime minister — a former cruise ship crooner — has been trying to portray himself as a statesman dedicated to solving the global economic problems. But his efforts have been undermined by fresh disclosures about his alleged night with a prostitute and explicit telephone conversations with a fixer who paid beautiful young women to attend his parties.
Patrizia D’Addario, 42, a former actress from Bari in southern Italy, says she spent the night of November 4, when Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, at Palazzo Grazioli, Berlusconi’s Rome residence. She described the experience: “I never slept . . . He was tireless, a bull.”
Berlusconi, 72, has branded her account “trash and lies”, saying he did not remember her. He had never paid a woman for sex, he explained, adding: “I never understood what the satisfaction is when you are missing the pleasure of conquest.”
Accounts given to acquaintances and prosecutors led to an investigation into the alleged fixer, Giampaolo Tarantini, 34, a Bari businessman. He is suspected of abetting prostitution.
D’Addario described a dinner party that lasted until 3am and what followed. The other guests at the imposing Palazzo Grazioli were Tarantini and two young women — Barbara Montereale, 23, a model, and Lucia Rossini. After the dinner, Berlusconi led D’Addario and the two other women to another room.
“Do you remember how he caressed me while we were on the sofa? And how he caressed you and looked at me?” D’Addario asked Montereale in a telephone call recorded on June 7.
Montereale replied: “It was disgusting, he did everything in front of the bodyguards.”
Berlusconi asked D’Addario to stay and told the other two to leave. Photographs allegedly taken in Berlusconi’s bathroom by Montereale and Rossini before they left, in which they laughingly pose with a hairdryer, are timed 3.57am.
According to D’Addario, Berlusconi led her to a four-poster bed with white drapes and quilt which he said were a gift from Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister. She said he took half-a-dozen ice-cold showers during the night and she joined him at his request.
At one point D’Addario later told a friend: “He suddenly stopped moving and I thought to myself, thank God, he’s fallen asleep. But it didn’t last.”
D’Addario confided she had felt embarrassed when a staff member walked into the bedroom in the morning with a suit for the prime minister, reminding him he was due to make a statement about Obama’s victory. Berlusconi told her to wait because he wanted to have breakfast with her.
While D’Addario waited, she went to the bathroom and took photographs. She later switched her recorder on and the tape captured the voice of a man asking: “Do you want tea or coffee?” She left the residence at about 11am.
On her return to Bari that afternoon, D’Addario also recorded a call on her mobile phone. “Bambina mia \!” Berlusconi greeted her. He asked her why she sounded as though she had a hoarse voice and she explained: “It was the showers.”
D’Addario, who has a 13- year-old daughter, has given prosecutors six audio tapes, one of which was allegedly recorded that night, and which include intimate details; she also filmed the bedroom with her mobile phone.
She had already recorded parts of a dinner party at the same residence two weeks earlier which, she says, she was paid £850 to attend.
Telephone taps for the investigation into Tarantini include dozens of explicit conversations in which Berlusconi talks to him about politics, parties and above all women, the magazine L’espresso reported on Friday. Berlusconi described what kind of women — down to hair colour and vital statistics — he wanted to invite to Rome and his Villa Certosa in Sardinia.
The conversations were often coarse, with Berlusconi chatting about what had happened on party nights. In a video on the magazine’s website he wears a white dinner jacket at a Villa Certosa party on August 11, 2008, attended by some 40 guests, many of them young women. Tarantini sits opposite the prime minister.
One of the guests, Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran, sings Ordinary World to shrieks from the women. Berlusconi then sings himself. The video also shows scantily dressed young women on merry-go-round horses in the estate’s grounds.
In an interview with The Sunday Times last week, Montereale denied doing “anything erotic” at Berlusconi’s home. “Tarantini paid me for going to the party as a hostess, not as an escort girl,” she said.
She has said that Berlusconi gave her £8,500 as a gift after a party in Sardinia in January because she was struggling to make ends meet.
Prosecutors have so far questioned some 20 women who are understood to have taken part in five parties at Berlusconi’s Rome residence and at least two in Sardinia.
The prime minister exuded confidence last week, saying he had no plans to change. “The Italians want me. I have a 61% popularity rating. They want me because I’m kind, generous, sincere, loyal and I keep my promises,” he said. Three weeks ago he had boasted that private surveys showed 75% of Italians approved of him.
In his first admission that he may have made a mistake, he said: “Unfortunately we invited the wrong person and he in turn invited the wrong person. But that happens to hundreds of people.”
In an interview with the newspaper Il Giornale yesterday, Tarantini apologised to Berlusconi and said he had no idea D’Addario was a prostitute. He took beautiful women to Berlusconi’s parties only “to look good”, paying no more than their expenses, he added.
The scandal is an embarrassment to Berlusconi as he prepares for the G8 summit on July 8-10. The revelations about his private life have weakened his political position in Italy and although there is no immediate threat, allies in his centre-right coalition are privately daring to contemplate a “post-Berlusconi” era.
Insiders say Gianni Letta, Berlusconi’s undersecretary and key lieutenant, has distanced himself from the prime minister and has for several months declined his invitations to dinner.
“Berlusconi has turned into the opposite of King Midas: he dirties everything he touches,” a disaffected associate said.
The disclosures have prompted a rare public show of disapproval from within the Catholic church, with Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the Italian bishops’ conference, admonishing in a homily: “Beware of the man who, inebriated by his desire for greatness, deludes himself into thinking he can be omnipotent and twists moral values.”
Aides to the prime minister say he is focusing on presenting a “can-do” image at the G8 and has drawn comfort from leaders, including Nicolas Sarkozy, who have agreed to tour the earthquake-hit city of L’Aquila with him.
James Walston, a professor of international relations at the American University in Rome, believes that Berlusconi will survive in office.
“Italians don’t really care about his private life — what matters to them is whether he gets the economy going again,” Walston said.
“But the body language at the G8 photocall will be pretty interesting: the other leaders will take one look at him and step back, as if he’s got a big wart on his face. I really don’t expect Obama to let Berlusconi grab him by the shoulder and pose next to him with big grins on their faces. And if he invites leaders to his Sardinian villa, as he loves to do, they’ll say, ‘Thanks, but no thanks’.”
Deal Maker
Giampaolo Tarantini, the businessman at the centre of the scandal, used his friendship with Silvio Berlusconi to obtain access to the prime minister’s brother and a junior minister for a client of his lobbying firm, prosecutors suspect.
After setting up CG Consulting, an events and public relations company, last November, he obtained a £128,000-a-year contract from Enrico Intini, chairman of a company involved in environmental protection.
According to Intini, Tarantini secured two meetings for him with Berlusconi’s brother Paolo, owner of the Milan newspaper Il Giornale. Intini wanted help in testing some equipment in Lombardy and reportedly hoped that Paolo could influence local officials.
Tarantini also engineered a meeting for him with Guido Bertolaso, junior secretary for civil protection.
Tarantini denied that he had benefited from his relationship with Berlusconi. “I never talked with him about my companies,” he said.
John Follain - June 28, 2009
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6590890.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1
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