Peter Brookes Cartoon for Thursday 27th October 2011

Berlusconi paid millions to glamorous women

James Bone Rome

Last updated October 27 2011 10:26PM

Silvio Berlusconi was paying millions of euros to glamorous women even before his 2009 split with his wife, new bank details reveal.

Prosecutors in Florence have traced €2.7 million in payments to women, including €220,000 to ex-Miss Lithuania Rasa Kulyte, from the billionaire Italian Prime Minister’s private bank account, between January 2007 and June 2008.

Other payments included €135,000 to Russian model Raissa Skorkina; €275,000 to actress Isabella Orsini; €150,000 for Virginia Sanjust, a former television presenter who is related to the Tuscan aristocrat who rented his hilltop estate to David Cameron and his family this summer.

Barbara Matera, who received €95,000, later became a Euro MP.

Mr Berlusconi also spent €337,000 at a Milan jeweller’s on gifts for his female friends.

In all, the Prime Minister, Italy’s third richest man, paid out €17 million over the 18-month period.

The money came from the same account 129 at the Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank from which Mr Berlusconi made some €34 million in payments last year.

The payments were revealed a day after Mr Berlusconi, 74, presented an economic reform package to fellow European leaders at a summit in Brussels. The plan will see the state retirement age raised from 65 to 67 and make it easier for employers to fire workers.

There has been increasing speculation as to whether Mr Berlusconi’s coalition will survive long enough to implement the ambitious market reforms, with unions promising to defend workers’ rights.

After dodging the worst of the financial crisis in recent years, Italy has moved to the centre of the debt crunch this year as its bond yields soared to near unsustainable levels.

Only intervention by the European Central Bank has prevented them from rising out of control.

Investors have fretted about Italy’s chronically sluggish growth and the sustainability of its €1.9 trillion debt, which at 120 per cent of GDP is second only to Greece’s in the euro zone.

Italy’s Downfall Silvio Berlusconi’s fecklessness and political cowardice have endangered the entire euro zone. He must go now

October 27 2011 12:01AM

Italy would be well rid of Silvio Berlusconi. It is not simply the tawdry sexual escapades, the whiff of corruption or the crass boorishness of his sexist remarks that have tested the patience of his embarrassed compatriots. It is his abject failure, after a total of eight years in office, to bring about any meaningful reform to Italy’s sclerotic body politic, his repeated failure to carry through promises and his mismanagement of Europe’s third-largest economy that have destroyed his political credibility and now pose an existential threat to all Italy’s partners in the eurozone.

The exchange of weary glances between Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and President Sarkozy when asked at the emergency summit on the euro whether they trusted Mr Berlusconi said it all. Europe is heartily sick of this buffoonish Prime Minister, whose insouciance, irresponsibility and political cowardice have so exacerbated the present crisis. Had Italy taken decisive steps to reduce its colossal debt, to carry through urgent tax and budgetary reforms and to stand firm in the face of trade union obstructionism and the lobbying by special interests, the haemorrhaging of confidence in the eurozone’s future might have been stemmed. Instead, Mr Berlusconi’s prevarication and evasions, his refusal to accept responsibility or play by established rules, have brought Italy to the brink of financial disaster. And if Italy cannot be saved, nor can the entire euro experiment.

There were hopes yesterday that Mr Berlusconi, squeezed between the demands of France and Germany for a coherent plan for fiscal reform and the opposition to any retrenchment by his opportunistic Northern League coalition partners, would be forced from office within days. President Napolitano could then have appointed a stop-gap government of technocrats to pass urgent reforms. But at the last moment Mr Berlusconi did a deal with Umberto Bossi, the maverick leader of the Northern League, which will allow him to offer a “letter of intent” to his impatient EU partners while avoiding any specific commitments. In return, the embattled Prime Minister is reported to have promised to resign within the next month or two and call a snap election in the spring to exploit the disarray in the centre-left Opposition.

This is the worst of all worlds. Without any timetable for reform and domestic wrangling precluding the austerity measures so urgently needed, the European Central Bank will not be permitted to buy Italian bonds on the scale needed to avoid the country being overwhelmed by repayments on its massive debt pile. And Italians, instead of being honestly confronted with the desperate state to which their blundering Government has reduced them, will be sidetracked into election politics and the scapegoating of their EU partners for their own predicament.

There should be no doubt about the challenges now facing Italy or the failure by Mr Berlusconi’s administrations, in 2001-06 and from 2008 until now, to meet them. Italy is one of the most indebted nations in the world, owing €1.9 trillion. This is equal to 120 per cent of its GDP. The three main credit rating agencies have all downgraded Italy recently, and yesterday the borrowing costs on short-term bonds rose to 3.53 per cent, the highest level in three years.

The sensible, but insufficient, measures proposed by Giulio Tremonti, the Economy Minister, include the opening of closed professions, cutting red tape and raising revenue through privatisations and a new wealth tax. All have been delayed by a prime minister scared of voter reaction. Two months ago this newspaper gave warning that Mr Berlusconi’s fecklessness was turning a localised problem into an emerging disaster. That disaster has now engulfed Italy and its neighbours. His best service now to his country would be to resign forthwith.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/leaders/article3207406.ece