‘Bunga bunga’ leads to lockup
Sex scandal brings prison term, lifetime ban from politics
MILAN — Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s flamboyant former premier, was sentenced to seven years in prison and banned from politics for life Monday for paying an underage prostitute for sex during infamous “bunga bunga” parties and forcing public officials to cover it up.
It was the most damaging setback yet for the 76-year-old Berlusconi, who has been tried several times for his business dealings but never before for his personal conduct.
Still, he vowed that his days as a political force are not over. He has two levels of appeal — and his supporters quickly rallied around him.
The charges against the billionaire media mogul resulted from what became known in Italy as “bunga bunga” parties hosted in 2010 by Berlusconi, then the sitting premier, at his villa near Milan, where he wined and dined beautiful young women.
Berlusconi’s defense described the dinner parties as elegant soirees; prosecutors said they were sex-fueled gatherings that women were paid to attend. The woman at the center of the scandal, Karima el-Mahroug, better known as Ruby, has described aspiring showgirls stripping for the then-Italian leader.
Both Berlusconi and el-Mahroug denied ever having sex, and el-Mahroug said she never worked as a prostitute.
After the verdict, he said in a message on Facebook that he believed he would be acquitted “because in the facts there is really no possibility to convict me.”
He called the sentence “incredible, of a violence never seen or heard before, to try to eliminate me from the political life of this country.” He pledged to “resist this persecution, because I am absolutely innocent, and I don’t want in any way to abandon my battle to make Italy a truly free and just country.”
The Milan criminal court’s ruling was unexpectedly stiff, going further than the original charges and questioning whether many of the young women who testified in Berlusconi’s defense had lied on the stand to protect him.
The panel of three judges, all women, said Berlusconi went beyond using his influence to cover up his relationship with the then-17-year-old Moroccan, as originally charged. They said he stepped in to win her release from police custody when she was accused of theft.
As a result, they added one year to the six requested by prosecutors.
The court also said it was turning over to prosecutors files containing the testimony of more than 30 women who attended the parties to investigate whether they had lied under oath when they denied a sexual character to the gatherings.
Berlusconi was not in court for the sentencing, but his lawyer, Niccolo Ghe- dini, said he would appeal a decision he called both “largely expected” and “out of reality.” The Berlusconi camp has accused Milan magistrates of mounting a campaign to sideline him politically.
Berlusconi loyalist Daniela Santanche, who attended the sentencing, denounced it as “an outrage, and a political sentence that has nothing to do with justice.” But she also said it should have no impact on the government.
Some political opponents, however, said Berlusconi, who has shaped political discourse in Italy for two decades, should withdraw from politics.
Alessandro Di Battista, a lawmaker in the anti-establishment 5 Star Movement, said Berlusconi “must go to jail.”
“It is outrageous that he is a senator that can make laws. Until he goes to jail, the country is not free.”
And the left-leaning governor of Apulia, Nicchi Vendola, said Berlusconi should “abandon public life.”
Berlusconi does not have any official role in government, but he is a senator in parliament and keeps influence in the uneasy grand coalition between his forces and the center-left Democratic Party that emerged after inconclusive February elections.