17 January,2011 07:46 AM IST | | Agencies
Italian prosecutors have uncovered a series of properties in Milan that were used to accommodate a stable of young women that were paid to perform striptease for Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, investigators have revealed.
The claims, contained in 300 pages of legal documents, provide details for the first time of the so-called "bunga-bunga" parties that a teenage Moroccan nightclub dancer said she witnessed last year at the prime minister's mansion at Arcore, outside Milan.
Ruby Rubacuori rubbished all allegations in an interview
Prosecutors are investigating whether Berlusconi paid for sex with the then 17-year-old girl, Karima El Mahroug, who gave herself the stage name of Ruby Rubacuori, or Ruby the Heart Stealer.
Paying for sex with a woman under the age of 18 is a crime in Italy and Berlusconi faces a prison sentence of up to three years if the allegations are proved.
Prosecutors want to interview him this week and insist that he face trial immediately. The 74-year-old prime minister allegedly kept up to 14 women in apartments in Milano II, a housing estate he built on the outskirts of Milan in the 1970s.
Police allegedly found sex toys, gifts of expensive jewellery and envelopes stuffed with 20,000 euros (Rs 13 lakh) in cash in the flats.
Berlusconi, who defeated a parliamentary no confidence vote last month, said at the weekend that the investigation was a politically-motivated attempt to destroy him by Left-wing prosecutors.
He said, "We face the umpteenth attempt to throw mud on my person and my institutional position, in the illusory attempt to eliminate me from the political scene. But this time they have exceeded all limits."
