Berlusconi and the 18 year old: illegitimate daughter, affair, or ... ?

[Syt]

Berlusconi may address parliament over links to teen

ROME (AFP) — Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, already haunted by corruption allegations, said he may address parliament on "vile" reports over his links to a teenager at the heart of his public divorce.

Berlusconi, 72, hit out at critics and the media over his ties to Noemi Letizia in the wake of the announcement by his wife Veronica Lario that she was seeking a divorce after he turned up to fete the girl's 18th birthday bash.

"Explain to parliament my relationship with Noemi Letizia? I'm thinking about it," the billionaire tycoon told T9 television in one of a series of interviews ahead of European parliament elections in June.

"I am tempted to go before lawmakers to talk about it, but I'm mulling it over," he said.

His divorce has turned ugly since his wife's decision to end their marriage was splashed out in newspapers three weeks ago, with a report quoting Lario as saying that she could no longer be with a man who "cavorts with minors."

The conservative leader insists the girl is merely a good friend's daughter and has since demanded a public apology from Lario. He has accused the leftist opposition of launching a smear campaign less than a month before EU polls.

He again lashed out at the opposition on Saturday.

"First of all, I am letting them continue in order to let people see how they are. It will be like a boomerang for them," he told T9.

"They will be ashamed and they will lose the respect of voters, because in this case there is nothing improper," Berlusconi said.

Opposition leaders have called on Berlusconi to publicly address his relationship with Letizia after media accused him of lying about their ties.

"The behaviour of several newspapers has really been disgraceful, vile -- I would even say disgusting," he told Radiomontecarlo. "And when people will understand the real situation, several people will be ashamed."

La Repubblica newspaper has published a list of 10 questions that remain unanswered over Berlusconi's relationship with the young aspiring model, whose birthday party he attended bearing a gold and diamond necklace gift.

The questions include when they met and where and when they have seen each other since, and whether Berlusconi had similar relationships with other teenagers.

The scandal earned Berlusconi a reprimand from the Roman Catholic Church, which said a prime minister should behave with more sobriety.

The flamboyant leader is well-known for surrounding himself with attractive young women while Lario, his second wife who is 20 years his junior, has stayed mainly out of the public eye, but he has never been linked to a minor.

Lario also slammed Berlusconi publicly over a string of attractive young women with little political experience, including a former Miss Italy contestant, that he was considering as candidates for his centre-right People of Freedom party in the EU polls.

Another scandal returned to haunt the premier when a Milan court on Tuesday released its full reasoning for convicting Berlusconi's British tax lawyer David Mills for accepting a 600,000-dollar (440,000-euro) bribe from him in exchange for false testimony.

The conservative leader said he would appear before parliament to explain what he has thought "for a long time about a certain court" -- an allusion to the numerous legal cases that have dogged him since the mid-1990s.

The staunch anti-communist, who has fought charges including tax fraud, false accounting and illegally financing political parties, has repeatedly accused Milan's "red judges" of having it in for him.

Although some initial judgments have gone against Berlusconi, he has never been definitively convicted.

Austrian media also report that the young lady is the owner of 16 apartments in the Naples region. Berlusconi also claimed that her dad was Benito Craxi's chaufeur and that's how he knew him/her (this has been denied by the father).

The lady in question:

[Habbaku]

Can hardly fault the man on his taste, at least.   

[DisturbedPervert]

Berlusconi and the 18 year old: illegitimate daughter, affair, or ... ?

Both   

[Syt]

The story has become a whole lot more interesting. 

Times: Silvio Berlusconi blocks publication of bikini-girls photographs

Silvio Berlusconi has blocked the publication of potentially embarrassing photographs said to include images of young bikini-clad and topless girls at his villa in Sardinia.

Police seized hundreds of photographs, which are believed to feature Mirek Topolánek, the former Czech Prime Minister, in the nude, after the media tycoon claimed that they constituted an invasion of privacy.

Some of the pictures were taken on New Year's Eve, when Noemi Letizia, 18, was among the guests. Veronica Lario, Mr Berlusconi's wife, announced more than a month ago that she will be divorcing him, partly because she could not "stay with a man who consorts with minors".

Prosecutors in Rome ordered the seizure of 200-300 images, taken by Antonello Zappadu, a Sardinian photographer, outside Villa Certosa on the Costa Smeralda. Mr Zappadu told local media that the pictures were taken from 2007 to 2008 and could be divided into three categories.

In the first, involving guests inside Villa Certosa, he said, some of the faces were obscured because "some of those present, seemed to me, to be minors. For that reason I made them unidentifiable to respect codes on privacy and the protection of minors." The second showed guests arriving on military aircraft and the third showed other guests, some in bikinis and some topless, at a country club.

Mr Berlusconi's lawyers appealed successfully to the courts to block the use or publication of the photographs after Mr Zappadu allegedly offered them to newspapers for €1.5 million (£1.3 million). The photographer went to the Carabinieri headquarters in Cagliari on Saturday to hand over a CD of the photographs.

Mr Berlusconi, who is due to visit Washington on June 15 for talks on the economy with Mr Obama, insisted that the images were innocent, claiming that they "consist of people photographed during absolutely private moments which are completely legal".

Niccolò Ghedini, his lawyer, said that the long-lens shots were a gross invasion of privacy. He told the newspaper Corriere della Sera that at least one of the pictures showed Mr Topolánek naked in the garden during a visit with his family in May last year. He added: "There were no minors, unless you want to include the young children of Topolánek."

Gino Flaminio, a former boyfriend of Miss Letizia, said he did not believe that she had had sex with Mr Berlusconi. He claimed that the billionaire had contacted Miss Letizia while she was his girlfriend, contradicting the explanations given by Mr Berlusconi and the Letizia family, who claimed that he was an old family friend. In a letter to Corriere della Sera yesterday, Mr Flaminio said he had been used for attacks on Mr Berlusconi.

Franco Frattini, the Italian Foreign Minister, also dismissed rumours that the Prime Minister had a romantic interest in Miss Letizia, but he said that sex with girls over the age of 14 was not wrong in principle. Asked by Newsweek magazine if a relationship with Miss Letizia when she was under 18 would have been a crime, Mr Frattini said: "Absolutely not. In Italy it is a crime under the age of 14. Between 14 and 18 is absolutely legal."

Mr Frattini insisted that any allegations of a relationship were "in any case absolutely not true". 

[Jaron]

If there is grass on the field, play ball.

[Razgovory]

If there is grass on the field, play ball.

I had a friend who used to say that.  Been in Jail, 6, 7 years now.

[Jaron]

Sometimes it is worth it.

[Eddie Teach]

I had a friend

You should try to make your trolling less obvious. 

[CountDeMoney]

If there is grass on the field, play ball.

I had a friend who used to say that.  Been in Jail, 6, 7 years now.

These are Europeans we're talking about.  They're allowed to do that.

[Josquius]

She doesn't look at all Italian but I would

[Phillip V]

The story has become a whole lot more interesting. 

pics?

[dps]

She doesn't look at all Italian but I would

You would look all Italian?

[Darth Wagtaros]

She doesn't look at all Italian but I would

You would look all Italian?

It's impolite to remark on others' handicaps.

[jimmy olsen]

Berlusconi and the 18 year old: illegitimate daughter, affair, or ... ?

Both   

Eww

[Grey Fox]

She's Hawt.