Silvio Berlusconi had 'five anthropological categories' of women at his 'bunga bunga' parties, according to the former showgirl accused of recruiting prostitutes, leaked transcripts of intercepted phone conversations allege.
Silvio Berlusconi had "five anthropological categories" of women at his "bunga bunga" parties, according to the former showgirl accused of recruiting prostitutes, leaked transcripts of intercepted phone conversations allege.
After inviting a friend to attend one of the parties at Berlusconi's mansion near Milan, Nicole Minetti allegedly said it was important that the young woman be briefed on what would take place.
"You will see total desperation," she told the woman, Melania Tumini, in an apparent reference to the way in which the models and would-be actresses competed for Berlusconi's attention.
Minetti, a TV starlet-turned-politician on trial for procuring high-class escorts for the former prime minister, told her friend: "There are five anthropological categories - there are the sluts, the South Americans who come from the favelas [slums] and don't speak a word of Italian, the more serious ones, others who are somewhere in the middle, and then there's me, and I do what I do."
The 50,000 alleged phone calls are part of evidence prosecutors are using against the former premier in a trial in Milan in which he is accused of paying for sex with a teenage nightclub dancer who was allegedly working as an under-age prostitute. He denies the charges.
In a separate development yesterday (Tuesday), Italy's highest court ruled that Berlusconi paid "substantial" sums of money to the Sicilian Mafia in the late 1970s and early 1980s as a guarantee against him or his family being kidnapped.
The court said Berlusconi dealt with the mob through Marcello Dell'Utri, who was convicted of mafia association and jailed for seven years in 2004 but subsequently appealed. In March the supreme court threw out the case on technical grounds and called for a new trial.
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