Last Christmas, Karima El Mahroug, “Ruby” of the Berlusconi Rubygate trials to you, opted to have a holiday break in the Maldives. On the day she and her entourage set out, she turned up at her travel agent to pay the bill of €55,000 euro, paying mainly in notes of €500. Not bad for someone who is officially listed as indigent and without any obvious income.
That is just one of many intriguing details to emerge this week from the "Ruby 3" investigation which yet again features the infamous Bunga Bunga sexual orgies at the Arcore, Milan private residence of 78-year-old, former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
When the media tycoon was acquitted of the charges of “abuse of office” and “involvement in child prostitution” in the so-called Rubygate trial last March, he might have hoped that that judgement represented the end of an ignominious chapter in his public life.
Apparently not so. At a news conference in Milan this week, prosecutors claimed Mr Berlusconi has spent more than €10 million in the last four years bribing the young ladies who attended the infamous parties, in order to buy their silence on the witness stand.
The prosecutors allege that Mr Berlusconi’s defence team encouraged more than 30 witnesses to commit perjury by swearing that the Bunga Bunga evenings were merely “elegant dinner parties” where nothing inappropriate took place.
This Rubygate 3 trial follows on directly from both Rubygate 1, involving Mr Berlusconi, and from another Ruby-related trial involving three Berlusconi associates. At the end of both those trials, the presiding judges invited the Public Prosecutor’s office to investigate the possibility that witnesses may have committed perjury in return for payments from Mr Berlusconi.
It is expected that within 20 days, prosecutors will file perjury-related charges against Mr Berlusconi and his all too willing witnesses.
Throughout Rubygate, Mr Berlusconi’s defence team argued that his payments to various young ladies were simply acts of “generosity”. This week, prosecutors contradicted that assertion, pointing out they had plenty of documentary evidence by way of contracts, phone calls and bank statements which would argue the payments were handed out very much on a business basis.
It is in that context that Ruby’s €55,000 Christmas holiday, not to mention lavish shopping sprees, investments in Dubai and Mexico, and much else besides attracted the prosecutors’ attention. In all, the prosecution argues that Mr Berlusconi has paid Ruby more than €7 million since the Rubygate/Bunga Bunga allegations first became public in 2010.
Silence in the face of threats
Nor was Ruby the only beneficiary of Berlusconi’s largesse. June 2013 wire taps of conversations between Mr Berlusconi and two of the Bunga Bunga girls, Iris Berardi and Barbara Guerra, show the young women aggressively requesting money from Mr Berlusconi. Prosecutors believe that many of the Bunga Bunga ladies received houses, cars and expensive jewellery in order to buy their silence in the face of threats that they would “tell everything to (investigating magistrate) Boccassini”.
On top of that, one witness in “Ruby 3”, namely businessman Ivo Raedelli, the owner of a luxury villa near Milan that was “made available” to some of the Bunga Bunga ladies, has stated that Mr Berlusconi was “worried about the consequences of any possible statements from the girls”.
Mr Raedilli claimed that the two women, Iris Berardi and Barbara Guerra, had threatened to “sing”.
This latest investigation has also thrown up a diary kept by Ms Berardi in which she records her evenings at Arcore and much else besides, writing:
“In my short life, I have lacked for nothing, drugs, drink and sex, from the orgies at Arcore to prostitution, including sex with women, sex with two men, I even gave it up the a... to Berlusconi...For a couple of months, that whole thing sickened me but if I think of it now, it just makes me laugh...”
In a news conference this week, investigators argued that Mr Berlusconi has continued to pay some of his Bunga Bunga ladies, right up until this week.
Thus far Mr Berlusconi has issued no comment on the most recent revelations. Instead, this week he consoled himself by attending the opening day of pre-season training at his football club, AC Milan.
Last month, Mr Berlusconi sold a 48 per cent holding in the club to Thai businessman Bee Taechaubol, reportedly for €500 million.