A foul-mouthed Silvio Berlusconi is caught saying he wants to leave Italy in a phone recording from an investigation into a blackmail plot against the Prime Minister that led to two arrests yesterday, Italian media reported.
Mr Berlusconi vented his frustration at multiple investigations against him in expletive-laden comments to a man alleged to have been an intermediary in blackmail payments to a businessman who allegedly paid women to attend Mr Berlusconi’s parties.
“I’m so transparent, so clean in everything I do. There’s nothing I could be reproached for. I don’t do anything that could be seen as a crime. People can say I... but that’s all they can say,” Mr Berlusconi was quoted as saying.
“I couldn’t give a.... In a few months I’m going to go away and mind my own... business. I’m leaving this... country that makes me feel like puking,” he said, according to a report by Italian news agency Ansa.
The report, which quoted official documents from the blackmail investigation, said the comments were part of a phone conversation on July 13 between Mr Berlusconi and online newspaper editor Valter Lavitola, who is now wanted by police.
The alleged blackmailer, Giampaolo Tarantini, and his wife, Angela Devenuto, were arrested earlier yesterday at their luxury apartment in central Rome near the famous Via Veneto – the most expensive street in the Italian capital.
Mr Tarantini received a €500,000 initial pay-off from Mr Berlusconi followed by smaller monthly payments of €20,000, according to Panorama magazine.
Mr Berlusconi himself was quoted by Panorama, a news weekly owned by Mr Berlusconi’s family, denying that he was being blackmailed by Mr Tarantini.
“I helped a person and a family with children that founds itself and still finds itself in very grave economic difficulties,” Mr Berlusconi told Panorama.
“I did nothing illegal. I only helped out a desperate man and asked for nothing in return. That’s how I am and I’ll never change,” he said.
The scandal over Mr Tarantini blew up in 2009 when a prostitute, Patrizia D’Addario, came forward to say she had sex with the Prime Minister in his palace in Rome.
Mr Tarantini later said he had paid around 30 young women to attend lavish soirees at Mr Berlusconi’s homes in Rome and Sardinia in which the female guests entertained the Prime Minister and provided sexual favours for him “if the need arose”.
Mr Berlusconi is currently a defendant in two trials for fraud and tax evasion and one for allegedly having sex for money with a then 17-year-old girl last year and then pressuring police to release her from custody in order to hide his crime.
The 74-year-old Prime Minister, who made billions in the television and construction industries before entering politics in the 1990s, has denied and laughed off all allegations but has admitted in the past he is “no saint”.
The latest swirling allegations come at a bad time for the Prime Minister, who has suffered several political defeats in recent months and is under pressure on the economic front because of Italy’s low growth and high public debt.