A conqueror, not an end-user

Jun 25th 2009 ROME - From The Economist print edition

Silvio Berlusconi's woes

More embarrassment, but the prime minister toughs it out

AN ELECTION win would gladden most politicians. But Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, was not inclined to lead the celebrations after his party did well in the second round of local polls on June 21st and 22nd. For on June 18th it had emerged that magistrates in Bari were investigating a possible call-girl ring, and that some of its women had been guests of Mr Berlusconi in Rome.
This has pushed questions about Mr Berlusconi’s relations with a young woman from Naples called Noemi Letizia into the background. But it has also meant that he has had to focus more energy on efforts to limit the damage to his reputation than on running Italy or helping its economy.
Mr Berlusconi has turned to his media empire for help. The latest issue of Chi, a weekly magazine published by a firm controlled by Fininvest, Mr Berlusconi’s family holding company (see article), includes nine pages of photographs and text promoting the prime minister as a family man. In it he denies ever paying women for sex, saying: “I never understood where the satisfaction is when you are missing the pleasure of conquest.” Italians have been mostly kept in the dark about the Bari investigation, which has been mentioned only briefly and obliquely on the main television channels. Mr Berlusconi and his children own the three main commercial channels and he exerts strong influence over two of the three owned by the state.
Yet parts of the Roman Catholic Church have now decided that the prime minister is setting a bad example. Famiglia Cristiana, an influential weekly, argues that the church cannot ignore Italy’s moral emergency. In a strongly worded article the magazine accuses Mr Berlusconi’s supporters of defending the indefensible. It attacks Mr Berlusconi’s lawyer for describing prostitutes as “goods”, and a man who pays them as an “end-user”.
Noting that politicians in other countries who transgress moral standards often resign, Famiglia Cristiana asks, “why is Italy so different?” Yet Mr Berlusconi is a man of resolve: comparisons with other countries will cut little ice. Nor will calls for him to go be echoed by politicians in his own party—they owe their positions to him. Mr Berlusconi has never enjoyed much standing in international circles. His latest problems will raise a laugh among his guests at the G8 summit next month. But he is unlikely to quit or be driven out.

Escort Patrizia D'Addario says Berlusconi party was ‘like harem’

Silvio Berlusconi faced mounting pressure to come clean about his private life yesterday after revelations that he entertained about 20 women, including two lesbian escort girls, until dawn during a private party at his house in Rome.
Patrizia D’Addario, the Bari prostitute who claims to have recorded footage that proves her encounters with the Prime Minister, gave more details of her first meeting with Mr Berlusconi, saying: “It felt like a harem. And there was only one sheikh. Him.”
She also spoke of the “strange burglary” in which her underwear, computer and the dress she wore to the party were allegedly stolen from her home days after she told a friend of the secret recordings.
It is understood that the video recordings, taken on her mobile phone, show Ms D’Addario in the Prime Minister’s bedroom. She claims that the four-poster bed with white drapes and duvets were given to him as a present by his friend Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister. A Kremlin spokesman denied that Mr Putin had ever given the Italian leader a bed.
A total of 19 women have now been questioned by prosecutors investigating an alleged prostitution ring run by Gianpaolo Tarantini, a Bari businessman.
One of those questioned, Barbara Montereale, 23, had her car set alight outside her home in Modugno, Bari, at about 5am yesterday. Police said that the Honda Jazz had been doused in a flammable liquid and destroyed.
Under the headline “Rivers of Cocaine” La Repubblica also reported yesterday that prosecutors had found evidence of frequent drug use at parties held by Mr Tarantini, 34.
Mr Berlusconi has dismissed the allegations surrounding the sex scandal as rubbish, and insisted during an interview earlier this week that he had nothing to be ashamed of. There is no suggestion that he knew of drug use at the parties in question. At least five parties at Palazzo Grazioli, his residence in Rome, and two at Villa Certosa, his luxury villa on the Sardinia coast, are under investigation.
However, in what appeared to be his first concession since the scandal triggered his wife to petition for divorce, Mr Berlusconi admitted yesterday that he had erred in allowing some guests to his parties but said that he would not change his ways.
“Some of my dinners have certainly been entertaining. I am a great entertainer,” he said. “I made mistakes over some guests, and they made mistakes in bringing other guests.”
Asked if that meant he would moderate his behaviour he replied: “I will not change. Italians want me as I am, my popularity rating is 61 per cent.”
In an interview yesterday Ms D’Addario, 42, repeated allegations that her house had been robbed last month. Among the stolen items, she claimed, were her computer, music CDs, her underwear and all her Versace dresses, including the one she wore to Palazzo Grazioli, where she met Mr Berlusconi for the first time in mid-October.
She said: “It was a very strange burglary. It happened in May, a few days after I had confided in a [male] friend that I had recordings of my encounters with the President.
“It scared me, and I began to understand.”
She also described her first experience of a party hosted by Mr Berlusconi, 72, during which the billionaire showed his female guests a long film of his meetings with foreign leaders, lavished them with butterfly trinkets and danced to Frank Sinatra singing My Way.
She dismissed claims that the Prime Minister did not know her. “I, unlike Silvio Berlusconi, remember every detail. When I arrived it would have been around 10pm. I took the lift. I went down a long corridor that opened into a room where I found there were already many girls. Others arrived later. In total we were around 20.” They were all Italian and some she recognised from television, she said.
“I was struck by one particular thing. While most of us were wearing short, black dresses — mine was Versace — and light make-up, two girls who were always together had long trousers. I learnt that they were two lesbian escorts who always work in a couple.”
On meeting the Prime Minister, she said, Mr Belusconi told her “how lovely you are”, adding: “He wanted me to sit next to him in the room with couches, where they put on a really long video. It showed his meetings with international leaders, meetings, a crowd that was singing, Meno male che Silvio c’e’ — Just as well we’ve got Silvio. All the girls at that point shouted, Ola!”
On entering the dining room the girls found a long table covered with colourful butterflies made with tissue paper and tulle. “They were butterflies everywhere, on the table centrepiece, on the candelabras. I got butterfly indigestion.”
She claims that the three-course dinner went on till dawn. “It was constantly interrupted by songs, dancing, jokes. Berlusconi also used a story to talk about me. He looked at me and said: “I know of a girl who no longer believes in men. I will make her believe. I will take her in my private jet.”
Then they slow-danced to My Way, she said. “We danced very close. And he doesn’t remember my face?”
Ms D’Addario has already claimed that she was paid €1,000 (£850) by Mr Tarantini to attend the party. She alleges that she did not receive more “because I did not stay”.
She declined to elaborate on her second visit to Palazzo Grazioli on November 4, the night of the US presidential elections. Ms Montereale, 23, who was also entertained by Mr Berlusconi that evening, claims that Ms D’Addario did not return to the hotel room they were meant to be sharing. She also says Ms D’Addario confided the next morning that she had had sex with Mr Berlusconi.
Yesterday the escort confirmed only that that Mr Berlusconi invited her to breakfast. “But it wasn’t in the dining room. It was something more intimate,” she said.

Lucy Bannerman in Bari - From The Times - June 26, 2009

Senior Roman Catholic bishop calls for Silvio Berlusconi to resign

A Roman Catholic bishop called for the resignation of Silvio Berlusconi, the first time that such a senior figure of the Church has done so, adding to a growing sense that the crisis over the beleaguered Italian Prime Minister’s private life is out of control.
Monsignor Domenico Mogavero, Bishop of Mazara del Vallo in Sicily and a former senior official in the Italian Bishops' Conference, said that Mr Berlusconi should “consider whether it is opportune to resign in the interests of the country”.
The Prime Minister was further criticised by the Church when Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco of Genoa, head of the Conference, warned against “men drunk on a delirium of their own greatness, who touch the illusion of omnipotence and distort moral values”.
A petition to the wives of the G8 leaders asking them to boycott the summit has nearly 7,000 signatures since the appeal began on Tuesday, the organisers said.
Mr Berlusconi appeared defiant as he made a visit to L’Aquila, the centre of the Abruzzo earthquake in April and the venue for the G8 summit.
He claimed that his popularity rating was 61 per cent, “an absolute record in the West” despite “everything that has been written and said in recent days”.

June 26, 2009 - Richard Owen in Rome - From The Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6579299.ece

Berlusconi whispers grow louder

By Guy Dinmore in Rome
Published: June 25 2009


Silvio Berlusconi's close supporters deny there will be any fuggi fuggi - rush to the exit - in the wake of highly-publicised scandals surrounding his private life, but senior allies in Italy's centre-right coalition are already contemplating a political future without their long-time leader.
Well-placed government sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, stress that they do not see the 72-year-old media tycoon and three-time prime minister resigning soon. Yet key ministers are starting to position themselves in the event that more damaging revelations might lead him to step down.
"This is a completely new scenario. The sands are shifting," one official said, looking back at the past two months since news broke about Mr Berlusconi's friendship with an 18-year-old would-be model and the subsequent declaration by his wife, Veronica Lario, that she wanted to divorce the man who "frequents minors".
An aide to Mr Berlusconi - maintaining the official position that the "scandals" are a fabrication and conspiracy involving opposition parties, newspapers and politically-motivated magistrates - said the cabinet fears prosecutors would time the announcement of an official investigation into the prime minister just as he is hosting world leaders at the Group of Eight summit next month.
Parallels are being drawn with 1994 when a court served notice that Mr Berlusconi was under investigation for corruption while he was leading a United Nations conference on crime. His government collapsed a month later when the Northern League pulled out of his coalition.
G8 foreign ministers preparing for the summit start a two-day meeting in Italy this evening.
Mr Berlusconi yesterday fought back against the drip-drip of revelations in an interview with Chi, part of his stable of magazines. He said he had no memory of the name or face of Patrizia D'Addario who alleges she was among women paid by a businessman to attend parties at Mr Berlusconi's private residences and had spent the night of the US elections in November last year at his Rome mansion.
Mr Berlusconi said he had never paid a woman for sex.
In the course of intercepting telephone calls made by Giampaolo Tarantini, a medical services businessman suspected of corruption in gaining health sector contracts, prosecutors in the port city of Bari started investigating whether he had procured prostitutes.
Mr Tarantini has been quoted as denying the accusations, saying he just paid their expenses. Mr Berlusconi said Mr Tarantini was introduced to him as a respectable entrepreneur last year.
Ministers fear that Ms D'Addario's claims to have pictures and tapes of her encounter with Mr Berlusconi might prove to be true and damaging, or that allegations surrounding Mr Tarantini will widen.
Key dynamics have changed, government sources say. First is the sense that Mr Berlusconi's perceived ambitions to move on from being prime minister to head of state have been dashed. Secondly, European elections this month showed that voters are shifting away. Lastly, Italy's international image has been diminished, and Roman Catholic clerics are exerting pressure.
Despite his image of the billionaire patron spoiling friends with gifts and lavish parties, allies portray him as isolated, with no one daring to offer personal advice. In his melancholic interview with Chi, Mr Berlusconi recalls that over the year his mother and sister have passed away, and he has lost the wife he loved.
Charismatic and rich, Mr Berlusconi is the glue that has kept his disparate coalition together. He has no obvious successor. His new party, People of Liberty, has no deputy leader.
Ministers are falling into several camps. Those whose futures depend on Mr Berlusconi surviving are vocal in defending him - including Maurizio Sacconi (welfare), Claudio Scajola (economic development) and Franco Frattini (foreign).
Women groomed by Mr Berlusconi - including Mara Carfagna (equal opportunities minister) and Stefania Prestigiacomo (environment) - are loyal, but in the current circumstances find it difficult to speak out.
Then there are key figures who have largely kept silent or distanced themselves, seeing a future beyond Mr Berlusconi, while hoping any succession will be orderly.
Gianni Letta, cabinet under-secretary, is closest to Mr Berlusconi and is effectively acting as prime minister, running affairs as his boss spends time fighting his problems. Giulio Tremonti, finance minister, has the advantage of close ties with the Northern League. Gianfranco Fini, speaker of parliament, is cultivating a respectable statesman image.
But like a Middle Eastern potentate who cannot afford to leave the scene, officials note one serious obstacle to resignation, apart from Mr Berlusconi's renowned doggedness. His immunity from prosecution, granted by his large majority in parliament, lasts only as long as he stays in office.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d0170a52-6120-11de-aa12-00144feabdc0.html

The Berlusconi Thing Comes To The White House

MONDAY, JUNE 15, 2009 Posted by michaelscherer

Before boarding a flight to the U.S. on Sunday, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said that he was heading to Washington "handsome and tanned." This was a joke--if you can call it that. Back in November, after President Obama won election, Berlusconi had described the new American leader as "young, handsome and sun-tanned." Apparently, the Italian leader can't get enough of his own humor. Ha. Ha. He pleases himself.

A complete accounting of Berlusconi's offensive acts, to his family, his country, the Italian democratic process, and even to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is long, and I won't bother to repeat the littany here. (The New Yorker has an excellent primer here, though registatrion is required to read it.) He is a man who always seems entirely pleased with himself.

As I write, Obama is preparing to meet with Berlusconi at the White House. Sun tans are unlikely to come up. Everything is expected to be cordial. But the meeting gives me an excuse to post an editorial that the Nobel Prize winning author Jose Saramago in El Pais, the Spanish newspaper. (An Italian publisher owned by Berlusconi recently refused to publish a Saramago book, which described Berlusconi as a "delinquent.")

Here is translation of Saramago's quite biting editorial, courtesy of this website.

The Berlusconi Thing by José Saramago

I don't know what other name I could give it. It's a thing that looks dangerously like a human, a thing that throws parties, that organises orgies and rules a country called Italy. This thing, this illness, this virus threatens to become the cause of the moral death of Verdi's country. If a deep vomit doesn't succeed in ejecting it from the consciousness of Italians, the poison will end up corroding the veins and destroying the heart of one of Europe's richest cultures. The basic values of human coexistence are trampled daily by the viscous feet of the Berlusconi thing; amongst its many talents, it has a funambulesque ability to abuse words, perverting their intention and meaning, as in the case of the People of Freedom, the name given to the party with which the thing took power. I've called the thing delinquent and I don't regret it.

For semantic and social reasons that others will be able to explain better than I can, the term delinquent has in Italy a much stronger connotation than it has in any other language spoken in Europe. I use the meaning given to the term by Dante's language in order to translate clearly and forthrightly what I think about the Berlusconi thing—though it is more than doubtful that Dante ever used the term. In my Portuguese, and according to the dictionaries and the current practice of communication, delinquency means ‘the act of committing crimes, disobeying laws or moral codes'. This definition fits the Berlusconi thing without a wrinkle, without any jarring, to the point that it seems more like a second skin than the clothes that the thing puts on itself. For years and years the Berlusconi thing has been committing crimes of a variable but always demonstrated seriousness. It's outrageous that it not only disobeys laws, but worse, it invents them to safeguard its public and private interests as politician, businessman and the companion of minors. Where the moral codes are concerned, it's not even worth talking about it, there is not a person in Italy or the rest of the world that doesn't know that the Berlusconi thing fell into the most abject of states a long time ago. This is the Italian prime minister, this is the thing that the Italian people have elected twice to serve them as a role model, this is the path to ruin which is dragging along the values of liberty and dignity that suffused Verdi's music and the political actions of Garibaldi—the ones that, during the struggle for unification in the 19th century, made of Italy a spiritual guide for Europe and for Europeans. This is what the Berlusconi thing wants to throw into the rubbish bin of History. Will the Italians end up allowing this to happen?

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/06/15/the-berlusconi-thing-comes-to-the-white-house/

Catholic paper urges Berlusconi to clarify scandal

ROME – An influential Catholic newspaper urged Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi on Friday to respond to allegations that women were paid to attend his parties.

Avvenire, the newspaper of Italy's bishops conference, ran an editorial saying the latest claims in a scandal linking Berlusconi to young women and models are raising questions not only among opponents but his supporters too.

The conservative premier has dismissed the entire scandal as a lie and a politically motivated plot by the opposition and left-leaning magistrates.

Earlier this week, Italy's Corriere della Sera published an interview with Patrizia D'Addario, a showgirl who was quoted as saying she was paid euro1,000 ($1,400) to attend a party at Berlusconi's Rome residence.

This was followed by reports that three other women had been paid and that D'Addario had given video and audio tapes proving her statements to prosecutors in the southern city of Bari who are investigating a local businessman for allegedly providing the women for the parties.

"It is necessary to make a clarification as soon as possible to answer pressing questions that are not coming only from political opponents but also from part of the public opinion that is not against the premier," Avvenire wrote.

Berlusconi, who was in Brussels on Friday, reiterated that the allegations were "garbage" and that he would "sweep them away." His top lawyer, Niccolo Ghedini, has dismissed the claims as baseless.

D'Addario's allegations have fueled a scandal that has enveloped the premier over his purported fondness for young women.

Berlusconi has been on the defensive ever since his wife announced she was divorcing him, citing his purported selection of starlets and beauty queens for this month's European Parliamentary elections and his presence at the birthday party in Naples of an 18-year-old model.

Berlusconi has said there was nothing scandalous in his relationship with Noemi Letizia, whom he has said was the daughter of an old friend from political circles. He said he went to the party because he happened to be in Naples that day.

Despite the scandal, Berlusconi's party won a majority of Italy's seats in the European Parliament electionsand also swept several local races from the center-left Democratic Party.

By ARIEL DAVID, Associated Press Write

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090619/ap_on_re_eu/eu_italy_berlusconi

Berlusconi flirts with a scandal too far for credibility

FIRST there were the plans to put forward "showgirls" as potential members of the European Parliament. Even for their main backer, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, their credentials appeared to be of the aesthetic rather than the political kind.

Then came the 18th birthday party of aspiring teenage model Noemi Letizia. Berlusconi, claiming he was a friend of her father, attended and gave her a diamond necklace.

Now there are allegations that a former model was paid to attend a party at the 72-year-old premier's Rome palazzo on the night of the US elections and later stayed the night.

Even Italians used to the turbulent world of Berlusconi - just a month away from hosting a G8 summit of global leaders - are questioning how much longer the septuagenarian leader can stay at the head of his country given the renewed fixation with his headline-grabbing private life.

The prime minister had hoped to repair his battered image as an international statesman in advance of G8. But newspaper editor Giuliano Ferrara, up to now one of Berlusconi's staunchest supporters, said the prime minister had to decide if he wanted to "drown in a happy ending made up of parties and beautiful girls" or restore some dignity to "a great political adventure".

James Walston, political science professor at the American University of Rome and a long-time Berlusconi watcher, said that with the G8 looming, the prime minister could not afford more personal scandal. "The G8 is coming but he'll have to spend a lot of time denying that he was involved in an escort service rather than being a statesman with the likes of Obama."

Berlusconi's personal problems have given his opponents a rare chance to deal a blow to the prime minister, who dominates the political landscape and remains popular in opinion polls despite several scandals and the global downturn. On Friday, Rosy Bindi, deputy house speaker from the Democratic Party, said: Either Berlusconi explains what happens or he must go." Antoino Di Pietro, leader of the Italy of Principles party, said Berlusconi was a latter-day Nero whose "weakness" for women was opening him up to blackmail.

An article run by the French political magazine L'Express last week will not help. Berlusconi is alleged to have told former French president Jacques Chirac, who was visiting his home: "See that bidet.... you don't know how many bottom cheeks have been on there." Picking up a pornographic magazine, he then pointed to a number of girls, claiming they were conquests.

His wife, Veronica Lario, is among the first to have deserted him. She filed for divorce after the Letizia incident in April, accusing him of "frequenting underage girls" and describing him as "not well". As divorces go, this one is proving to be distinctly messy.

The latest allegations involve Patrizia D'Addario, a 42-year-old former model and showgirl from Bari, in southern Italy.

According to Corriere della Sera, Italy's leading mainstream newspaper, magistrates investigating a Bari businessman, Giampaolo Tarantini, on suspicion of corruption discovered that he had paid female escorts to accompany him at dinner parties at Berlusconi's house.

Corriere said one of the three women told magistrates she spent the night at the large, two-floor residence in part of a former palace in central Rome which Berlusconi uses as his private residence. This was seven months before his wife began proceedings for divorce.

D'Addario maintains that she visited the Palazzo Grazioli twice last year, first in October after being asked by Tarantini. She told an interviewer that she had asked for payment and a fee of ?2,000 euros had been agreed.

She said she had attended the party along with 20 other women where they ate pizza, drank champagne and were shown videos of Berlusconi's meetings with President Bush. She says: "I knew he was struck by me because he asked what work I did and I told him about a residential hotel I wanted to build." She had returned to her hotel rather than staying the night and so had only been paid ?1,000 euros.

Then, on 4 November, the night of the US presidential elections, she had been asked to return to the villa. She says that when Berlusconi saw her "he immediately remembered my building project. Then he asked me to stay". She claims she has tape recordings of both encounters.

D'Addario told Corriere della Sera that he had promised to send "two of his trusted people" to Bari to help dismantle hurdles to her construction project but he had not stuck to his promise.

She had also been dropped as a candidate for the Euro elections earlier this month when his wife objected to her husband's plan to field "showgirls". She later stood as a local candidate for Berlusconi's ruling People of Liberty party but had not been elected.

Berlusconi, now in his third term as prime minister, following two earlier scandal-tinged spells in the 1990s, has come out fighting as usual.

"Once more, newspapers are full of trash and falsehoods," he said. "I am not going to let myself be affected by these aggressions."

His lawyer Nicolo Ghedini, said that even if the allegations were true, Berlusconi could not control who his male guests brought to the prime minister's residence and he would have been at the very most an "unwitting subject".

But Ghedini came under attack in newspaper editorials for saying that even if Berlusconi had had anything to do with the women he would only have been "an end user, and so not punishable". He later apologised for his choice of words.

Published Date: 21 June 2009

By Philip Pullella in Rome

http://news.scotsman.com/world/Berlusconi--flirts-with-a.5386431.jp