Europe’s sleaziest and definitely most ridiculous politician, Silvio Berlusconi, has promised to resign amidst rumors Italy is on the verge of collapse. Here in the States we mostly know him as the perma-tanned skirt chaser who wears bandanas over his hair implants. Now, however, that he’s about to make an exit after two decades as Italy’s PM, all his secrets are coming to the suface, including child prostitution, orgies with minors, mafia killings etc, so this bit of news was too good to pass. Below is an account of his “accomplishments” and why he lasted so long in his position.
Silvio Berlusconi won three general elections, two by a landslide.
It was always clear that he won elections because, after starting a property business in the late 1960s, his tentacles had spread into every corner of Italian life by the 1990s. He owned newspapers, magazines, insurance companies, video rental outlets, film distribution companies, publishing houses, a Milanese football team and much else besides.
More recently, Belusconi bribed English lawyer David Mills to withhold testimony in a corruption case. And on top of this, Berlusconi has been accused of tax evasion and sex with minors.
He’s known to be a sex addict, someone who, it is said, likes to be repaid with orgies in return for sorting out a ‘business problem’. That, in common parlance, is called prostitution.
After he attended the 18th birthday of a blonde called Noemi Letizia, journalists began to ask about her connection to him: was she his daughter or his lover?
Creepily, Noemi revealed that she called Berlusconi ‘Papi’ (Daddy).
Two years ago, it emerged that two of Berlusconi’s henchmen, one of them a newsreader on one of his channels, would take him photo albums of teenage girls for hire.
He would flick through its pages until he came to one he liked, saying: ‘I want that one.’
Berluscone personally intervened to spring a teenage North African beauty from prison and while his explanation was that she was granddaughter of the then President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, and that he was doing him a diplomatic favour it turned out that the girl was just another of the teenage girls who he had sex with during his wild parties.
It was an incident that led to Berlusconi’s prosecution for having sex with minors and his being named, in a report for the U.S. State Department just last month, as someone being ‘investigated for facilitating child prostitution’.
During recent years, more stories have emerged of Berlusconi’s debauchery. Investigators have seized photos of his orgies — the bunga bunga parties — from the phones and laptops of escorts
They show girls dressed as policewomen, nuns and schoolgirls, kissing each other and performing stripteases.
One escort, Patrizia D’Addario, made a tape recording of her sexual encounter with Berlusconi, then wrote a kiss-and-tell book in which she praised the ageing premier’s stamina.
Yet Berlusconi survived it all. He was too powerful to be brought down — his government even passed a law giving the prime minister immunity from prosecution.
And so he just kept embarrassing his country with his colossal gaffes: he called Obama ‘suntanned’, kept German leader Angela Merkel waiting on the red carpet while he talked on his mobile, he told homeless earthquake victims they should enjoy their camping holiday, and so on.
At the recent G20 summit, with world leaders worrying about the implosion of the global economy, Berlusconi spent his time checking out the butts of all the women present.
That, after all, is what he’s used to doing: he’s filled the Italian parliament with foxy young showgirls, even elevating them, astonishingly, to ministerial posts.
Berlusconi had mafia connections through his father and even employed a well-known mafioso, and many suspect his entire property empire was a complex money-laundering operation.
It is also believed that he won 100 per cent of Sicilian seats in the 2001 general election due to his connection with the mafia.
In the Seventies, Berlusconi joined P2, an illegal masonic lodge of Right-wing extremists. The lodge was connected to various notorious crimes, including the hanging of ‘God’s Banker’, Roberto Calvi, under a bridge in London in 1982. Berlusconi once denied being a member of P2 in court, but his membership was later proven and he was convicted of perjury, although an amnesty was granted.
Below are excerpts from some of his public gaffes over the years:
Encouraging traders to invest in Italy in 2003: ‘Italy is now a great country to invest in . . . today we have fewer communists and those who are still there deny having been one. Another reason to invest in Italy is that we have beautiful secretaries . . . superb girls.’
Replying to allegations about his private life in 2011: ‘When asked if they would like to have sex with me, 30 per cent of women said, “Yes”, while the other 70 per cent replied, “What, again?”’
To a crowd of Milanese voteRs in 2010: ‘I am a man who works hard all day long and sometimes I look at some good-looking girl; it’s better to be fond of pretty girls than to be gay.’
In the aftermath of the Abruzzo earthquake in 2009: ‘Of course, their lodgings are a bit temporary. But they should see it like a weekend of camping.’
On his critics in 2006: ‘I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I am a patient victim, I sacrifice myself for everyone.’
On his height in 2006: ‘Only Napoleon did more than I have done. But I am definitely taller.’
On his heigh (again) in 2008: ‘They keep calling me a dwarf, but I’m taller than [Nicolas] Sarkozy and [Vladimir] Putin.’
On Obama’s election as U.S. president in November 2008: ‘Handsome, young and also suntanned.’
On going bald in 2001: ‘I have little hair because my brain is so big it pushes the hair out.’
On the personal appearance of political rival Mercedes Bresso in 2010: ‘You know why Mercedes Bresso is always in a bad mood? Because in the morning, when she gets up, she looks at herself in the mirror to put her make-up on — and sees herself. And so her day is already ruined.’
