Prime minister in a ridiculous country

SOURCE la Repubblica

Berlusconi and the tarts
by GIUSEPPE D'AVANZO


"Torte?" asked the public prosecutor. "Torte" (literally, "cupcakes", or "tarts") is a euphemism he had never heard. This occurred recently, in Bari, when the prosecutor was questioning a drug dealer and the man was relating the customs of his gang. The prosecutor went on to ask, "What do mean by 'tarts'?" The dealer answered, "Just 'tarts', sir. Orgies, parties, what do you call them?" That expression - 'tarts' - figures today in the words of a source close to the Bari investigation because these "tarts" are the critical point that render the reconstruction of the evenings with Silvio Berlusconi so politically embarrassing. Among the 19 young women, paid guests at the Prime Minister's residence who were questioned by the Bari public prosecutor, there is more than one witness who admits to spending the night with Silvio Berlusconi, "along with other girls."

Patrizia D'Addario has already talked about "parties" and "orgies". Patrizia was at Palazzo Grazioli for the first time on the evening of 15 October 2008. She refused to spend the night in "the big bed", a gift from Vladimir Putin to the Prime Minister. She did stay soon afterwards, on the night of 4 November; regarding those hours we know - more or less - everything. But why did Patrizia leave Palazzo Grazioli that first time?

She didn't leave on impulse, Patrizia maintains. She says she's never managed to enjoy orgies and she had a hunch that she was going to find herself in an unpleasant situation if she stayed on after the dinner, the dancing, the hoopla, the jokes, the songs and the music by Apicella. There were a lot of escorts (call girls) there that evening at the Prime Minister's residence. At least five. Two were very conspicuous: lesbians, "the only ones wearing pants; they always work as a couple." Dinner was still underway, Patrizia remembers, when Berlusconi wanted to show her the bedrooms. Especially the one with "the big bed". They weren't alone, Patrizia recalls. There were another two escorts with Berlusconi who began to nuzzle "the sultan". Berlusconi, Patrizia says, called to her, inviting her with words and gestures to join them. Instead, she chose to lock herself in the bathroom and leave only after the group had returned to the salon to finish dinner. It was then, in the bedroom with "the big bed", that Patrizia decided not to spend the night although she'd been hired for two thousand euros. Back at her hotel, the Valadier, she immediately told her friend Barbara Montereale about the episode. Barbara, though very reticent, does remember one thing quite clearly: "Patrizia preferred to leave because there were two other escorts." Besides, she herself witnessed similar scenes at Villa Certosa in January 2009, when "scores of foreign girls squeezed around Papi, fighting amongst themselves, almost attacking each other."


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Patricia's account has been confirmed by the testimony of another woman, Maria Teresa De Nicolò, a 37-year-old from Bari. Her participation in an evening at Palazzo Grazioli followed along the same lines as Patricia's experience, almost a ritual. The same modality, identical rules to respect. A sudden, rather mysterious summoning to Rome. A little black dress, discreet makeup. Before going to bed, if requested by the host, show complete willingness to evince ecstatic admiration for "Silvio's" accomplishments, appreciation for the jokes and songs, and gratitude for the little "boutique" gifts. The same contact, Gianpaolo Tarantini. Poor 'Gianpi', a friend recounts, some days he was really desperate because although it's easy enough to organize "a little party" with a few days' notice, it's pretty tough to do it in a single afternoon. In the summer and fall of 2008, Berlusconi's sexual addiction was compulsive, a frenzied satyriasis. He sometimes called Tarantini ten times a day (calls intercepted by the magistrate of Bari). He'd ask him to get "the girls" together that very evening, with only a few hours' notice. Gianpi did what he could, his friends recall. But haste, without exception, makes waste. Thus he didn't always have time to "invite", to Rome from Milan, the "perfect courtesans" - i. e. "beautiful, very young, very professional and above all, mindful of maintaining the necessary confidentiality".

When pressed, Gianpi had to make do, his friends say, "with what he had at hand." And thus it was that people entered Palazzo Grazioli who would never have set foot inside, had more time been available. Maria Teresa was summoned (for the first and only time) in just such an emergency. She went to Rome, and as occurred with Patrizia, Barbara and Lucia R. ("guests" on 4 November), she discovered in the salons of the Russie that the destination for that evening's work would be Palazzo Grazioli. Maria Teresa admitted to the Bari investigators that she had sex with the Prime Minister and was "reimbursed" by Gianpi. But what matters here is the "tart", the number of "girls" who stayed over that night with the Prime Minister in his residence at Palazzo Grazioli. (It was "a Monday or Tuesday in September 2008", Maria Teresa recalls vaguely, probably Tuesday, 23 September.) Maria Teresa won't state the number (although she did tell the magistrate questioning her). However, she was disposed to admit to La Repubblica that "there were other girls". The following day, some of them followed Berlusconi to Melezzole, near Todi. Then, (as L'Espresso has revealed), the Prime Minister renounced a "mission" to go to New York and participate in the UN Millennium Campaign to end hunger and poverty in the world, in order to consort with his "girls" at the Marc Mességué health center (which was closed to outsiders).

* * *


The relevance of the most factual account of these evenings with Silvio Berlusconi rests therefore on this 'critical point', which has yet to be cleared up: the "tarts" at Palazzo Grazioli. So far, the story has been outlined this way. An ambitious young man (Tarantini) brings high-priced call girls to the residences of the head of the government, offering them to the "sultan" (Berlusconi) in order to lubricate business and boost his power and influence. The "sultan" - ignorant and ingenuous - has sex with one of these girls (Patrizia D'Addario). Once the episode comes to light, the "sultan" makes three moves: he denies the episode ("I don't remember this Patrizia's face"); he discredits the witness ("My political enemies paid her to accuse me"); and he trivializes what happened ("I just chose the wrong guests").

In the words of Nicolò Ghedini, Berlusconi is simply a "person caught unawares. If I'm going to the Prime Minister's home and I show up with a call girl, to make myself look good, it would be hard for him to know that. And, if there should be relations [sexual ones between the Prime Minister and that woman], he would continue not to know and therefore [the fact] cannot have any legal or moral implications." (Agi, 18 June).

Never mind justice (Bari does not argue that Berlusconi has committed any sort of crime and holds Tarantini guilty only of aiding and abetting prostitution; the guests were not induced into prostitution, it was their profession and nobody was ignorant of that). Never mind morality (and the right of every person to exercise the sexual habits he deems appropriate). What counts here is what happened and what it means.

What happened can be rationally stated this way. In contrast to what Berlusconi and his lawyer claim, the Prime Minister was aware that Tarantini's "girls" are call girls. He asked Gianpi expressly for them. Berlusconi knew what D'Addario's 'profession' is, as Patrizia said, as Barbara Montereale confirmed and as Maria Teresa De Nicolò has testified in other circumstances.

Therefore a well-defined tableau emerges from the Bari investigation. There is a very discrete, if reckless, organization around the Prime Minister that supplies the "sultan" with prostitutes for his evenings with a "tart" for dessert; a service network that moves according to forms, programs and desires that are always the same. Tarantini is merely one of the servers that the Prime Minister activates when he's in the grip of his sexual addiction. It is emerging from the investigation that the same "job" Gianpi executes is performed by at least two other people (a professional in Bari and a madam in Rome).

This happens. What it means (Stefano Rodotà has already written it here) calls public ethics into question. "A politician cannot lie. He must accept public divulgation of his every activity when this serves to evaluate the coherence between the values he espouses and the behavior he engages in." (La Repubblica, 10 July). From this point of view, the scenario is clear. Berlusconi has once again deceived this country about this story. He was not unaware that the "girls" swarming over Putin's "big bed" were prostitutes. He demanded prostitutes for his "tarts" from the very middlemen who were seated at his table (and he did not hesitate to fondle the girls before the eyes of those present).

The private behavior of the Prime Minister is in alarming contradiction with the values (God and family) he proclaims in public and the laws he proposes in Parliament (severe punishment for those who aid and abet prostitution and for those who have sex with prostitutes). And this is the state of things that Berlusconi must finally face up to in public, whatever the outcome may be for his reputation and his political destiny.

(traduzione a cura di Lynn Swanson)