• Prosecutors: Six years for Berlusconi over sex charges

    By Silvia Aloisi, Reuters

    Italian prosecutors on Monday called for a six-year jail sentence and a lifetime ban on holding public office for former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, charged with abuse of office and paying for sex with a minor. 


    The 76-year-old billionaire media tycoon and center-right senator is accused of paying for sex with Karima El Mahroug, better known by her stage name "Ruby the Heartstealer," when she was under 18, during the now notorious "bunga bunga" parties at his villa at Arcore near Milan in 2010. 

    However, prosecutors argued the far more serious charge was that Berlusconi abused the powers of his office during a separate incident by arranging for her to be released from police custody where she was being held on theft charges. 

    They requested 5 years imprisonment for that and a year for paying for sex with a minor. The verdict is expected on June 24. 

    "At Arcore there was a system of organized prostitution aimed at the satisfaction of the sexual pleasure of Silvio Berlusconi," Milan chief prosecutor Ilda Boccassini said in a more than six-hour closing argument. 

    "There is no doubt that Ruby had sex with the defendant, from whom she received benefits," she said. 

    Berlusconi has vigorously denied the accusations. El Mahroug, who staged a dramatic protest outside the Milan court last month, has always denied being a prostitute or having had sex with Berlusconi. 

    The sentencing request adds to a mass of legal problems facing Berlusconi, who last week lost an appeal against a four-year sentence for tax fraud in connection with his Mediaset broadcasting empire. Berlusconi will now launch a second and final appeal. 

    No final verdict will be enforced until the appeals process, which can last for years, is exhausted but Berlusconi's legal sagas have created growing tension within the coalition government of Prime Minister Enrico Letta. 

    Berlusconi mounted a fierce attack on prosecutors over the weekend at a stormy rally in the northern city of Brescia that was attended by center-right members of the government including Interior Minister Angelino Alfano. 

    Letta's own center-left Democratic Part sharply criticized Alfano's presence at the rally, which it took as an endorsement of Berlusconi's comments and the prime minister warned his coalition partners that there could be no repeat if the government was to survive. 

    Berlusconi's campaign continued on Sunday with a lavish two-hour special on his own Canale 5 channel presenting his version of the "bunga bunga" evenings where prosecutors allege that sex parties involving a string of young women took place. 

    The program showed El Mahroug admitting that she had lied about certain aspects of her life to investigators but flatly denying any sexual relationship with Berlusconi and complaining at media representations of her as a prostitute. 

    It filmed the dining room and theatre at Berlusconi's palatial villa near Milan and presented an array of witnesses who said the evenings there were convivial parties where he entertained guests by singing and telling stories.

     

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  • Berlusconi 'bunga, bunga' trial delayed for eye condition

    Remo Casilli / Remo Casilli / Reuters, file

    Italy's former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi appears on a television show in Rome on Feb. 20.

    By Manuela D'Alessandro, Reuters

    MILAN — Italian judges on Friday postponed a hearing in former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's "bunga bunga" sex trial after the media mogul checked into hospital with an eye condition.

    The trial, on charges he had sex with an underage prostitute, is seen as the most damaging of three cases currently against him as he fights for his political future following last week's inconclusive election.

    The case was entering it final stages when his lawyers asked for an adjournment to allow him to get treatment.


    Prosecutor Ilda Boccassini told the court she suspected the move was a delaying tactic and asked for an independent check on his condition.

    But Judge Giulia Turri and two colleagues accepted Berlusconi had a legitimate reason for a postponement and moved the hearing to Monday.

    A final ruling in the case had been expected on March 18 but it was not clear if the adjournment would cause a delay.

    Berlusconi has always denied any wrongdoing, and said on Thursday that all the charges against him were "judicial persecution... which re-emerges every time there are politically complex moments in the political life of our country."

    He fell short of a victory in last week's vote, even though he rallied his supporters and performed better than expected.

    The vote ended with a hung parliament and the president is still struggling to form a new government.

    Berlusconi has a condition that causes "pain, intolerance of light and disturbed vision" that is best treated in hospital, Berlusconi's personal doctor, Alberto Zangrillo, told reporters.

    "He's in day hospital treatment now, but he probably will spend the night as a precautionary measure." By law, the 76-year-old billionaire has a right to be present at all his trial hearings.

    On Monday, the prosecution in the sex trial said parties at Berlusconi's Milan villa were arranged for prostitution and were not the elegant dinners he suggested.

    The parties involved dinner, erotic "bunga bunga" dancing and then sex between aspiring female TV stars and invited guests, prosecutor Antonio Sangermano said.

    Lawyers for the owner of the country's biggest private broadcaster, Mediaset, have also asked that a hearing scheduled for Saturday in another trial be postponed because of his eye problem.

    In that trial, Berlusconi is appealing against a four-year jail sentence for tax fraud in connection with the purchase of broadcasting rights by his television network.

    Under Italian law, Berlusconi will not serve any jail time until the appeals process is exhausted, and a higher court could overturn the ruling.

    Berlusconi was convicted three times during the 1990s, before being either cleared by higher courts or benefiting from the statute of limitations by which cases expire if a final verdict is not reached within a given time period.

    On Thursday, an Italian court sentenced Berlusconi to one year in jail over the publication by his family's newspaper of a transcript of a leaked wiretap connected to a banking scandal in 2006.

    In that case, the statute of limitations for the charges expires in September, before the appeals process can be completed, legal sources said.

  • Polls: Cigar-chomping former communist will be Italy's next leader

    Alessandro Garofalo / Reuters, file

    Democratic Party leader Pier Luigi Bersani, shown with his wife, Daniela, in December, just might be the choice to take over from Prime Minister Mario Monti.

    By Frances D'Emilio, The Associated Press

    ROME -- If opinion polls are right, he's the man headed to win Italy's elections this month.

    No, not Silvio Berlusconi, the flamboyant media mogul chased out of office by Europe's debt crisis and attempting a comeback. Nor Mario Monti, the star economist-turned-premier credited by financial circles with saving Italy from ruin.

    Grabbing fewer headlines but a greater share of support: Pier Luigi Bersani — a cigar-chomping former communist with a resume thick with unglamorous posts and almost zero name recognition outside Italy.

    His high forehead burrowed in a frown, Bersani came across as looking so stern in early campaign posters that aides had to scramble to replace them with ones showing him smiling. Still, he handily beat the easy-going, rakishly handsome young mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, in a primary last fall of their Democratic Party to become the center-left candidate for premier.

    'The opposite of Berlusconi'
    And that might point to his appeal: Italians seem to find his complete lack of glamour refreshing after the rambunctious Berlusconi years.

    "His strongest point is he's the opposite of Berlusconi," said Jonathan Hopkin, a political scientist at the London School of Economics. "Berlusconi is a showman. He (Bersani) is not entertaining."

    The ascent of Bersani — whose camp in late January enjoyed roughly 33 percent support against some 27 percent for the Berlusconi side — also has much to do with his ability to draw on the former Communist Party's entrenched network of activists, funding and economic connections, such as business cooperatives. The publication of poll results is banned in the last two weeks before elections in Italy.

    But in the counterintuitive world of Italian politics, Bersani has long embraced economic liberalization in several stints in government.

    As industry minister, Bersani waged an uphill battle to free up such areas of the economy as energy, insurance and banking services.

    Even the smallest reform efforts brought resistance. Operators of Italy's gasoline retail network called a strike in 2007 when the government decided to allow supermarkets to sell gasoline. Similar protests frustrated plans to auction off taxi licenses and to allow supermarkets to sell nonprescription drugs such as aspirin. Years later, even Monti had no luck trying to persuade the powerful lobby of pharmacists to surrender their hold on nonprescription drugs.

    As transport minister, Bersani branded unions "irresponsible" when an airport ground workers' strike combined with an air traffic controllers' strike on the same weekend train workers walked off the job.

    He also worked to undo the center-left's image as supportive of a sprawling state economy, especially in the energy sector. He championed legislation that ended a 37-year-old monopoly by then state-controlled electric utility ENEL.

    Born in 1951 — 15 years to the day after Berlusconi — Bersani grew up in Emilia Romagna, the affluent north-central region at the heart of Italy's so-called "red belt." There, citizens in cities like Bologna voted for decades for Italy's communists, and later, for the communists' post-Soviet heirs.

    Bersani's website shows him posing in a childhood photo with his parents against a backdrop of Esso gas pumps. His father, a car mechanic, ran a gas station.

    In his autobiography, Bersani recounts an episode from his childhood that points to what might drive him as a leader.

    He once organized a strike of fellow altar boys after the church pastor refused to divvy out to the tips that families left for them after weddings or baptisms. "The pastor would seize the money and buy sweets and nougat bars for us at Easter and Christmas. That didn't seem fair to me."

    So during one ceremony, the altar boys took off their cassocks and walked out of the church. "The next Christmas, the pastor gave the boys an equal share of the tips of that year, stipulating one condition: that our mothers knew the exact figure we got."

    Fairness is a quality Bersani promises to promote if elected premier: "At the first Cabinet meeting, we have to think about those who have nothing to eat," he told a campaign rally.

    Related:

    Pope's resignation could thwart Berlusconi comeback

    Italy's comeback kid Berlusconi defends Mussolini

    Disgraced Berlusconi says he'll run for fourth term

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  • 'Ruby the Heart Stealer' shows up in court for Berlusconi sex trial

    Karima El Marough, better known as "Ruby the Heart Stealer," was called to testify over allegations that former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi paid to have sex with her when she was still a minor. NBC's Claudio Lavanga reports.

    By Claudio Lavanga, Producer, NBC News

    It was a much-anticipated celebrity moment for the star in the most sensational trial to come out of modern Italian politics.

    Karima El Mahroug, better known as "Ruby the Heart Stealer," was met at the High Court in Milan on Monday morning by a pack of shouting photographers. It looked like a red carpet moment, but "Ruby," sporting designer clothes, was heading not for a gala, but for a conversation with the judges in the trial of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

    The 76-year-old media billionaire is accused of having paid the former nightclub dancer for sex when she was still a minor — a crime that could cost Berlusconi his reputation and 15 years in prison.

    Both she and Berlusconi have denied having sexual relations.

    Mahroug, now 20, was asked to take the stand in December but went on vacation in Mexico instead. The prosecution alleged that it was a ploy designed to delay a verdict.


    This time, the defense requested her testimony, and then reversed itself, asking that she not be required to testify. The panel of three judges agreed that she would not be required to testify in open court, Reuters reported.

    Berlusconi's attorneys also made an appeal to halt the trial until after a national election next month, arguing that the proceedings would interfere with Berlusconi’s chances of a political comeback in the Feb. 24-25 polls. The judges dismissed the argument.

    The trial's last session is currently scheduled for Feb. 4, meaning that a verdict could come before the election.

    With the campaigning under way, the hearing churned up memories of the scandal that hung over the prime minister’s last months in office.

    Mahroug, who was a child runaway from Morocco, is alleged to have been one of the main participants in a series of parties at Berlusconi's villa near Milan during which women put on lurid striptease shows, according to the testimony of several young women.

    The 76-year-old media billionaire is accused of paying for sex with Mahroug when she was under the age of 18, a crime in Italy, and abusing his office to have her released from police custody in a separate theft incident.

    Berlusconi resigned in November 2011.

    Now the former prime minister is leading his center-right People of Freedom party into the election. The group’s popularity is edging upward, but it still trails far behind the center-left alliance.

    Berlusconi's allies accused the Milan magistrates of trying to sabotage his election bid.

    "The PDL is clearly bouncing back, and magistrates are as usual entering the fray," said PDL deputy Enrico Costa.

    Regardless of the trial’s outcome, Berlusconi is paying a hefty price for his weakness for the scandal. His wife left him in 2009 claiming she couldn't “live with someone who consorts with minors” and was recently awarded a divorce settlement of $130,000 a day.

    Reuters contributed to this report.

  • Disgraced Berlusconi says he'll run for fourth term as Italy's premier

    Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister best known for his wild parties and alleged sexcapades, is officially out of a job as Europe's debt crisis hits Italy. NBC's Richard Engel reports.

    By Frances D'Emilio, The Associated Press

    ROME -- Billionaire media baron Silvio Berlusconi, who resigned in disgrace a year ago with Italy tottering through the European debt crisis, on Saturday announced he is running for a fourth term as premier.


    Berlusconi, 76, reluctantly stepped down in November 2011 after pressure from international financial markets. He was later convicted of tax fraud and has faced sexual misconduct allegations.

    An unelected government of technocrats, led by widely respected economist Mario Monti, was appointed to replace him. Opinion polls have seen the popularity of Berlusconi's Freedom People Party plunge to far below that of Italy's other large party, the center-left.

    But he is confident he can achieve victory.

    "I'm running to win," Berlusconi told reporters outside the training facilities of his soccer team AC Milan.

    No date has been set for elections, linked to the end of Parliament's term in late April. But Berlusconi's decision earlier in the week to yank the support of his party — Parliament's largest — for Monti's anti-crisis government increased the likelihood that Italy's president would dissolve the legislature and call early elections.

    "It seems to me that March 10 has been indicated" as a possible date for early elections, "and that seems a date that's fine with me," Berlusconi said.

    Monti was flying back from a conference in France for a meeting Saturday evening at the presidential palace to take the pulse of political tensions. President Giorgio Napolitano has made clear he wants Parliament to at least pass a vital budget law later this month and avoid a "precipitous" demise amid mounting political uncertainty. 

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  • Italy court sentences ex-premier Berlusconi to 4 years in prison

    Giorgio Cosulich / Getty Images file

    Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, shown here in April 2011, was sentenced Friday to four years in prison.

    By NBC News and wire reports

    Updated at 11:40 a.m. ET: MILAN -- An Italian court on Friday convicted former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of tax evasion and sentenced him to four years in prison.

    But the verdict did not mean that Berlusconi will go to prison anytime soon.

    In Italy, cases must pass two levels of appeal before the verdicts are final. Berlusconi is expected to appeal. He will not have to serve any time in jail until his final appeal is heard.

    Still, the conviction Friday was significant because it was the media mogul's first prison sentence in years of criminal probes.

    The verdict was almost certainly the final nail in the 76-year-old’s political coffin, two days after he announced he would not run for premier in upcoming elections.

    Berlusconi was not in the courtroom for the verdict.

    Berlusconi, along with other defendants convicted in the case, must deposit a total of €10 million ($13 million) into a court-ordered fund appeals, which could take years, proceed.

    Berlusconi stepped down as prime minister last November after Italy came under mounting market pressure to deal with its high debt load and Berlusconi failed to come up with persuasive financial reforms.

    Scheme involved rights to U.S. movies
    Prosecutors alleged that the defendants were behind a scheme to purchase the rights to broadcast U.S. movies on Berlusconi's private TV networks in his Mediaset empire through a series of offshore companies and had falsely declared the payments to avoid taxes.


    A total of 11 people were on trial.

    Three were acquitted, including a close associate of Berlusconi, Fedele Confalonieri, chairman of Mediaset. Berlusconi and three others were convicted, including a Hollywood producer, Frank Agrama, who received a three-year sentence.

    Four defendants were cleared because statute of limitations had run out.

    Not the first Italian PM to be convicted
    Berlusconi is not the first former Italian premier to be convicted of criminal charges.

    From April: 'Burlesconi' sex scandal comes full circle

    Former Socialist Premier Bettino Craxi eluded an arrest warrant and turned up at his villa in Tunisia in 1994 after a court in Italy charged him in a massive corruption case. He was tried in absentia, convicted and sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison, never returned to Italy and died in exile. Craxi was considered Berlusconi's mentor thanks to his opening to private television in Italy from a state monopoly.

    Former seven-time Christian Democrat premier, Giulio Andreotti, was convicted of involvement in a Mafia-murder. But he was cleared on appeal and never went to jail.

    Complete World coverage on NBCNews.com

    In the same courthouse on Friday, another criminal trial against Berlusconi was held. He is charged in that case with paying for sex with an under-age teenager and trying to cover it up. He denies wrongdoing.

    Berlusconi has been tried numerous times for his business dealings. He has always denied wrongdoing and alleged that the cases were politically motivated. In each case to date, he has been cleared or seen the statute of limitations expire.

    NBC's Claudio Lavanga, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • In court, Italian showgirl reveals code name for Berlusconi

    Laurent Dubrule / Reuters

    Italy's former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi arrives for a meeting of the European People's Party (EPP) ahead of an informal EU leaders summit in Brussels on May 23.

    By Claudio Lavanga, NBC News

    ROME — Throughout his political career, Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi collected almost as many nicknames as he did gaffes and lawsuits.
     
    Comedian Beppe Grillo once famously called him a "psycho dwarf," poking fun at his height — 5 feet, 5 inches, according to most sources.

    An editorialist for the Italian daily La Repubblica once called him "The Caiman" — a term for crocodiles — to underline his predatory nature. That nickname was also used for the title of a film by Italian director Nanni Moretti, in which he skewered the former prime minister.

    Then came "Papi" — Italian for "Daddy" — the nickname teenager Noemi Letizia used to call Berlusconi, who famously attended her 18th birthday party before his wife finally left him saying she could no longer be with a man who "consorts with minors."

    In a court in Milan on Friday, testimony added another nickname to the roster: "Betty." 
     
    That is what Barbara Faggioli, one of the showgirls who attended Berlusconi’s controversial dinners accused of leading to wild after-parties in which prostitution was rife, said she used to call him.
     
    Faggioli took the stand in the ongoing hearing in Milan in which prosecutors are trying to establish if Berlusconi paid for sex with an under-aged prostitute known as "Ruby The Heart Stealer" during one of the now infamous after-dinner parties known as "bunga bunga."
     
    She defended the former prime minister and claimed that no sex was ever exchanged in return for the generous presents Berlusconi would hand out to the many girls attending his parties. But when Faggioli was called to clarify some of the wiretapped conversations in which she was featured, she explained she used "code names" when talking about Berlusconi with other girls.

    Berlusconi, she explained, was "Betty." And money, often paid out by the former Italian prime minister to women as "gifts," were called "shoes."
     
    Despite the fact that Faggioli tried to make things better for him by defending Berlusconi in court, she made it worse by claiming that she thought of him as a father, casting an immediate shadow over the whole category in Italy.

    In all fairness to Italian fathers, most are not accused of showering their "girls" with money and gifts or of staging alleged shows with women dressed in skimpy clothes, sometimes dressed as sexy nuns.

    Faggioli even wore an expensive necklace that she admitted was given to her by Berlusconi as a present. It was, apparently, her way to prove to judges, and Italy, that she had nothing to hide.
     
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  • Woman dressed as burlesque Obama for Berlusconi, court told

    Jim Watson / AFP - Getty Images, file

    US President Barack Obama (right) greets the President of Italy Silvio Berlusconi upon his arrival for dinner during the Nuclear Security Summit at the Washington Convention Center in Washington in 2010.

    By Reuters

    ROME -- One of the young women who attended Silvio Berlusconi's "bunga bunga" parties told a court on Friday that she dressed up as a burlesque version of U.S. President Barack Obama to entertain the former Italian prime minister. 

    In testimony during a trial against the 75-year-old Berlusconi on charges of paying for sex with an underage prostitute, Marysthell Polanco said she had also dressed as prosecutor Ilda Boccassini.  

    Boccassini, known as "Ilda the Red" because of her hair color and what Berlusconi says is her communist political sympathies, is one of the prosecutors in the ongoing trial. 

    "I dressed up as Boccassini with a toga to make him laugh, and also as Obama," Polanco told the court. 

    Witness: Italian ex-PM Berlusconi hosted strippers dressed as nuns

    Polanco, a 28-year-old from the Dominican Republic, said the parties were innocent fun accompanied by burlesque -- but not pornographic -- entertainment. 

    Berlusconi: 'Elegant dinners'
    In April, Berlusconi said the parties were "elegant dinners" where there was sometimes entertainment that he called a "burlesque game." 

    Previous witnesses who attended his parties painted a more sordid picture, including nudity, mimicked sex, and one described two women wearing nasty versions of nuns' habits and performing a raunchy pole dance. 

    Berlusconi to 'Ruby the Heart-Stealer': 'I'll cover you in gold ... just don't say anything'

    Berlusconi is charged with paying Moroccan-born Karima El Mahroug for sex in 2010, when she was 17, and then abusing the powers of his office by getting her freed from police custody after she had been arrested for theft. 

    Berlusconi denies all wrongdoing. 

    Berlusconi accused of plagiarism by Italian rapper

    He had a close rapport with former U.S. President George W. Bush, earning several invitations to Washington and even to his Texas ranch, but he never was able to establish a similar relationship with Obama after repeatedly describing him - and later his wife - as "suntanned."

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  • Berlusconi to 'Ruby the Heart-Stealer': 'I'll cover you in gold ... just don't say anything'

    Karima El Mahroug of Morocco (left), also known as "Ruby the Heart-Stealer," poses for photographers in a hotel in the western Austrian ski resort of Ischgl in April, 2011. Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi attends a soccer game between Parma and AC Milan in Parma in March of this year.

     

    By Claudio Lavanga, NBC News Producer

    ROME – All we knew of Ruby was that she stole Silvio Berlusconi’s heart. But according to leaked telephone conversations published on Monday, she also took quite a lot of money from him to lie about their relationship.

    Karima El-Marough, better known as “Ruby the Heart-Stealer,” is a Moroccan-born dancer who, according to prosecutors in Milan, had sex with the former Italian prime minister for money when she was still a minor. It’s a crime which could land Berlusconi in prison for up to three years. 

    So far El-Marough has denied having had sex with Berlusconi, although she did admit to having received thousands of euros from him. Berlusconi has claimed to have given money to her and other women as gifts to “help out,” but according to leaked telephone conversations between and her friends, that money was meant to buy her silence. 

    In the wiretapped telephone conversations dating back to October 2010, when the scandal broke, El-Marough told a number of friends that Berlusconi asked her to act "crazy" and lie. In exchange, he would give her whatever she wanted.

    According to the wire-tapped calls on Oct. 28, 2010, she told a friends: “Silvio called me to tell me he’ll give me as much money as I want, as long as I act like I am mentally unstable and a liar… as long as I don’t tell the truth. He told me ‘I’ll give you all the money you want…I’ll cover you in gold…just don’t say anything.’” 

    'Burlesconi' sex scandal comes full circle

    On the same day, El-Marough told a friend named Sergio that she had even set a specific price for her silence on the relationship with Berlusconi. 

    “Through my lawyer I asked him for five million euro ($6.5 million) in exchange for me acting like I am crazy… a liar… He accepted,” she said, according to the transcripts.

    When another friend asked her if she was afraid of being involved in such a high-profile scandal, Ruby seemed to acknowledge that she had actually hit the jackpot.

    “No, I am not afraid. I will get a lot of money…fame…why should I be afraid?” she is heard saying on the phone.

    What is certain is that she did gain fame. Since the scandal broke out, she has become a household name, even though she is better known as “Ruby the Heart-Stealer” than Karima El-Marough. She has since had a baby and appeared in a couple of small commercials.

    Whether she was effectively paid to lie in order to protect Berlusconi is up to the prosecutors to prove. But the leaked phone conversations are so far the most damaging piece of evidence against the former Italian prime minister in a trial that has that could not only end his political career, but his life as a free man.

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  • 'Burlesconi' sex scandal comes full circle

    Giuseppe Cacace / AFP - Getty Images

    Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at a recent soccer match between Parma and AC Milan at Ennio Tardini Stadium in Parma on March 17, 2012.

    By Claudio Lavanga, NBC News Producer

    ROME – Among the many derogatory nicknames Silvio Berlusconi’s detractors came up, one was "Burlesconi," a way to emphasize his propensity for gaffes and tendency to adopt sexist and inappropriate humor.

    But as usually happens with the flamboyant former Italian prime minister, truth is stranger than fiction.

    On Friday Berlusconi, 75, made a rare appearance at the trial in which he stands accused of having sex with an under-aged prostitute known as “Ruby the Heart-Stealer” during one of his now infamous “Bunga Bunga” parties, sex-fueled revelries that allegedly took place at his private residence in Milan.

    And suddenly, burlesque had a lot more to do with him than his detractors could have ever dreamed of. 

    While the trial officially started at the end of last year, it has already offered a fly-on-the-wall peek into Berlusconi’s scandalous private life, with lurid details revealing an impressive partying lifestyle that would be trying for a man a third his age.

    On Monday Imane Fadil, one of the models who was invited to Berlusconi’s “elegant dinners,” as he called them, testified in court. She said that she personally saw women dressed as nuns don their habits and crucifixes before they jumped on a pole where they performed some very unholy dance moves.

    Another model, Fadil said, wore a mask of Ronaldinho, a famous soccer player from AC Milan, the Italian team owned by Berlusconi, before she kicked off her skirt down to her G-string.

    Witness: Italian ex-PM Berlusconi hosted strippers dressed as nuns

    Gifts from Gadhafi
    On Friday, the former prime minister, and currently still the leader of the biggest political coalition in the Italian lower house of parliament, clarified once and for all some of what happened.

    Speaking to journalists in Milan's High Court after the hearing, Berlusconi described what he saw in detail. "I remember seeing a woman dressed as a policeman, one as a nurse and another one as Father Christmas ... those were dresses that I received as presents from Gadhafi," Berlusconi said. (See a video published on the website of Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper. He's speaking in Italian).

    "[Gadhafi] gave them to me when I went to Tripoli for an expo on Libya's fashion. I saw those dresses and told him I liked them, so he sent them to me," he said.

    A little later, he again spoke with journalists, this time outside the courtroom in Milan. “They were dressed up, some as policemen, but it was only a burlesque contest.” 

    He insisted that the girls were guests of innocent dinners dominated by an atmosphere of joy, serenity and conviviality.

    Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi promised Tuesday to resign after parliament passes economic reforms demanded by the European Union. NBC's Richard Engel reports from Rome.

    “Sometimes,” he specified, “the girls would follow me to the house theater room,” a room formerly used by his sons as a private discotheque.

    “Women are exhibitionists by nature,” Berlusconi said. “And if they work in show business, they are even more exhibitionists. They like putting up shows and they decided to compete in a burlesque show.”

    When asked if he was a judge of the show, he replied: “No, but I watched with interest. I had a lot of fun, and will continue to have fun.”

    (See video of Berlusconi’s comments to journalists outside the courtroom. He’s speaking in Italian).

    And there is the irony of it all.

    While the admission by any current or former prime minister of a European country that they held a burlesque contest with half-naked women dressed as nuns and policemen would be enough to end their political career shamefully, Berlusconi seems somehow different. His list of alleged felonies, including sex scandals, tax frauds and abuse of office, has now become so long that confessing to organizing a strippers competition, at the end of the day, seems not so bad.

    The trial continues, and with more revelations expected from witnesses, the former prime minister’s private life will soon be stripped naked. Nothing more appropriate, for a man dubbed Burlesconi.

  • Witness: Italian ex-PM Berlusconi hosted strippers dressed as nuns

    Daniele Mascolo / EPA

    Moroccan model Imane Fadil, left, and an unidentified companion arrive at a Milan court to testify in Silvio Berlusconi's trial.

    By msnbc.com staff

    A witness in the trial of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi testified that she saw strippers at his infamous "bunga bunga" parties performing while dressed as nuns, Italian media reported.

    Morrocan model Imane Fadil, 27, testified in a Milan court on Monday. Berlusconi, 75, is on trial for paying an underage prostitute and abusing his power to have the young woman released from police custody.

    Fadil told the court she was given about $2,600 the first time she attended one of Berlusconi's parties, the BBC reported. She told the court how at one such party she watched two women wearing black monastic garb perform for the former prime minister, then strip to their underwear.

    Fadil alleged one of these women was Nicole Minetti, who is now an important member of Berlusconi's People of Freedom Party in Milan, BBC reported.

    Fadil is one of several women who decided to testify in Berlusconi's trial.

    According to The Guardian, Fadil claims she never spent the night following a "bunga bunga" party, but that the women who did were compensated more for sex.

    "The girls complained they were afraid of diseases," Fadil said. "But they all competed to stay because whoever stayed earned a lot more."

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  • Berlusconi accused of plagiarism by Italian rapper

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

    Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister who resigned in November amid an acute economic crisis and several sex scandals, has been accused of plagiarizing an Italian rapper in the new anthem for his political party People of Freedom, The Telegraph reports.

    Called "People of Liberty," the song includes the line "We are the people who hope and who fight, who believe in the dream of liberty!," according to the British paper.

    But Italian rap artist J-Ax, whose real name is Alessandro Aleotti, claims Berlusconi's song is similar to one of his own -- released in 2002 -- called "People who hope" ("Gente che spera").

    Related: Berlusconi's next act: Love song CD

    On his official Twitter account, J-Ax threatened to file a complaint against Berlusconi for plagiarism. "Tomorrow I will denounce Berlusconi," the artist tweeted.

    Berlusconi, 75, is no stranger to the music world. Late last year, Berlusconi released “True Love,” his latest CD of love songs. The CD is the fourth record he has produced with Neapolitan singer and guitar player Mariano Apicella, who since 2003 has been considered the personal minstrel of Berlusconi.

    While he was a young student, Berlusconi paid for his studies by working as a crooner on cruise ships.

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