The Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, insisted yesterday that he had nothing to apologise for despite facing criticism from his daughter this week over his relationships with teenage girls and prostitutes.
Despite being mired in a sex scandal that has dogged his leadership for months, Mr Berlusconi said the lurid stories and claims that the relationships left him open to blackmail were being spread by “anti-Italians who should be ashamed of themselves”.
“Nobody can blackmail me and I have no skeletons in the closet. I have nothing to apologise for in my private life, not even to my family,” he told reporters at his pre-holiday news conference. The 72-year-old billionaire, never one to indulge in selfdeprecation, squeezed in some praise for his role on the diplomatic stage, saying at one point that he had shown a “touch of genius”.
The three-time Prime Minister has been embroiled in scandal since his wife cited his fondness for “frequenting minors” as part of the reason for seeking divorce this year. He has since failed to give a coherent explanation of his relationship with Noemi Letizia, a model who attended one of his private parties when she was 17.
Although he has denied ever paying women for sex, he also joked that he was “no saint” after Patrizia D’Addario, a call girl from Bari, claimed to have spent the night with him.
Yesterday Mr Berlusconi appeared to make light of accusations of chauvinism, fuelled by his sexist jokes and preference for pretty young women for political posts, such as the former topless model Mara Carfagna as his Equality Minister. “The foreign press has written that I hate women,” he said. “If there is one thing I adore, it is women. That is well known.”
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