Berlusconi's popularity wilts as lurid tapes allege sex for favours

Lurid new revelations about Silvio Berlusconi’s alleged antics with a call girl led the Italian Opposition to press yesterday for the first parliamentary debate on the damage being done to the country’s image by its errant Prime Minister.

The political pressure increased on Mr Berlusconi, 72, after secret recordings by the prostitute Patrizia D’Addario plumbed new depths of indignity, with discussions of the Prime Minister’s antipathy to condoms, his alleged predilection for threesomes and whether he suffered from sexual disease.

A voice said to be Mr Berlusconi’s can also be heard in another recording bragging: “Now I am unbeatable — three times!” It turned out that this was a reference to the number of G8 meetings he has hosted — more than any other international leader.

Ms D’Addario also gave a lengthy interview to a Spanish magazine claiming that she had spent the night with Mr Berlusconi but refused to charge her usual fee of ¤because, she alleged, he had promised to sort out planning problems with a family building project.

Yesterday’s disclosures marked the latest chapter in a sex-and-parties saga that has run for months and included the announcement that Mr Berlusconi’s wife will sue for divorce over his friendship with a model aged 18. It finally became too much for the centre-left Opposition, the Democratic Party (PD), which drafted a motion stating that the constant drip of revelations had “weakened the image and authority of the Italian Government”.

Mr Berlusconi’s majority coalition in the Senate delayed the motion last night but was shaken by a dip in its leader’s popularity rating to below 50 per cent for the first time since his election last year, suggesting that Italians are beginning to tire of the affair.

In the second series of tapes and transcripts to be published by the left-of-centre weekly L’Espresso, Ms D’Addario discussed Mr Berlusconi with Gianpaolo Tarantini, the man who allegedly hired her to go to the Prime Minister’s official residence last October. Mr Tarantini, who is being investigated over allegations of corruption and abetting prostitution, told Ms D’Addario that Mr Berlusconi would not be “taking you like an escort, he will be taking you as a friend of mine that I brought along”. He told her that Mr Berlusconi did not use condoms.

Another recording allegedly captured a conversation between Ms D’Addario and Mr Berlusconi on November 5, the morning after she claimed to have stayed with him at the Palazzo Gravioli in Rome. He allegedly asked her if she would like tea or coffee and then told her: “There is everything you want.”

In a third recorded conversation, purportedly from October 2008, Mr Berlusconi told his guests that he had to go to Berlin for a meeting of economic leaders from Europe and Asia. He talked about his own central role as host of the G8, reminding his audience that he was the only leader to preside over it three times — in Naples in 1994, Genoa in 2001 and L’Aquila in 2009.

Yesterday’s recordings followed Monday’s release of a tape that features a conversation said to have taken place between the Prime Minister and the escort girl before they spent the night together.

“I’m going to take a shower too. If you finish before me, wait for me on the big bed,” said a man’s voice purported to be the Italian Prime Minister.

“Which bed? Putin’s?” queried his female companion, “Oh, how cute, the one with the curtains.”

In another conversation, Ms D’Addario is allegedly heard telling Mr Tarantini that the Prime Minister had inquired about her friendship with another woman at the party, Barbara.

Ms D’Addario said: “I said we have known each other a long time, and that Barbara is also a friend of mine; and he said that he has a friend and that he wants me to be licked by her.”

Mr Berlusconi’s office declined to comment on the tapes yesterday. The Prime Minister’s lawyer has disputed the veracity of the tapes, saying that they were “the fruit of invention”.

A poll for Ipr Marketing showed that trust in Mr Berlusconi as a leader had fallen four points in the past two months, with 50 per cent saying that they had “little” or “no” trust in the Prime Minister, while 49 per cent of those polled had “fair” or “a lot” of trust in him. A similar poll by Ipr Marketing in September 2008 found that 60 per cent had “fair” or “a lot” of trust in Mr Berlusconi.

Ms D’Addario, 42, claims to have made her recordings during two visits to Palazzo Grazioli with a number of other women in October and November last year. Mr Berlusconi has not denied that the woman went to his Rome residence, but last month he said that he did not know she was an escort — a claim rejected by Ms D’Addario, who said that she told the Prime Minister how she came to be a prostitute.

Over seven pages and a photoshoot in the Spanish magazine Interviu, Ms D’Addario claimed yesterday that Mr Berlusconi boasted in front of a coterie of attractive women at a party that he would resolve her family building project.

She said that she did not charge him when they slept together because she believed he would live up to his promises. But, she added, Mr Berlusconi reneged. “I feel disillusioned and tricked. Someone in power like this should not behave this way,” she said.

She claimed that she was paid 2,000 euros to attend a party on October 15 last year at which Mr Berlusconi introduced himself to her and then introduced his dog, Frufru, a present from George W. Bush. “The premier asked if I would stay the night at the palace but I said no. It wasn’t part of the deal. I didn’t want to stay,” she said.

She said that she told Mr Berlusconi how her father committed suicide after the failure of a building project in Bari which was blocked for environmental reasons. According to Ms D’Addario, the Italian leader started to sing “This girl has a project in Bari”. He offered to send two people to resolve the problems connected with her father’s building project, she alleged.

She said that she returned for another party on November 5 and claimed that she spent the night with Mr Berlusconi. She said they did not eat until midnight or 1am and she left at 11am the next day. “I didn’t charge anything, I didn’t receive anything. It was all for a promise,” she said.