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.
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