“Ruby”, the young woman at the heart of a sex scandal involving Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, will attend this year’s Vienna Opera Ball, according to entrepreneur Richard Lugner.

“We have just signed the contract,” said the Austrian, who notoriously invites a starlet to accompany him to the ball every year.

In recent years, the 78-year-old, who briefly starred in his own reality television show, secured the company of British tabloid darling Katie Price, Baywatch stars Pamela Anderson and Carmen Electra, striptease queen Dita von Teese, and US socialite Paris Hilton.

This year however, Austrian tabloids chronicled his failure to get his first two choices as guests before picking US actress Bo Derek, whom he then dropped after she apparently made too many demands.

If all goes according to plan, Moroccan-born pole dancer Karima El Mahroug, nicknamed “Ruby the Heart Stealer,” will now join Mr Lugner in his loge alongside former Dallas actor Larry Hagman.

Opera Ball organiser Desiree Treichl-Stuergkh however has already hit out at Mr Lugner’s latest guest.

“This is the biggest embarrassment that Mr Lugner has ever made. It’s sad, humiliating and disrespectful,” she said, threatening to cancel his loge next year.