Mon, 24 June 2013. Berlusconi found guilty of having abused power and had sex with a under-age prostitute, sentenced to seven years in jail.
After more than seven hours of deliberation, today Milan's court judges sentenced to seven years in jail the 76-year old former prime minister of Italy guilty of a couple of charges related to the Rubygate (the inquiry about the Moroccan belly dancer - and allegedly whore - Karima El Mahroug ).
7-year jail sentence for Mr Berlusconi
The sentence involves a ban from holding
public office for life. All this pending the outcome of an appeal.
Fri, 24 May, 2013. Testifying as a witness at the a trial were three individuals are charged for favouring prostitution, Moroccan stripper Karima El Mahroug (aka Ruby the Heartstealer says she was “talking crap” when she gave away details of spicy parties at Silvio Berlusconi's villa."
Me a prostitute? If not a saint, I might be a nun!
Ruby Rubacuori (Italian for Heartstealer) appeared on the trial (which is already a news, she sometimes forget about it...) where former TV presenter (and Berlusconi's friend, at least before he got dramatically fired by Mediaset, in 2012) Emilio Fede, celebrity agent Lele Mora and Nicole Minetti, a former Lombardy local councillor, model and showgirl are accused of supplying prostitutes to Mr Berlusconi's so-called "bunga-bunga" festive evenings in his villa in Arcore. Nicole said she had been hanging around just because she was the one and only girlefriend of the media millionaire.
Sun, 12 May, 2013. Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset broadcaster Canale 5 airs a two-hour documentary to demonstrate prosecutors sex-related charges against the former prime minister are groundless (at least to the public opinion), as a last act of a counteroffensive against the Italian judiciary.
All but chaste
“The twenty years' war” is the title of a two-hour documentary, that was aired on Sunday, the day before the prosecutor's closing arguments would be declared at the Rubygate sex scandal trial (the request would be a 6-year sentence), where Silvio Berlusconi is accused of abuse of power and having paid the then-minor Karima El-Mahroug (aka Ruby Heartstealer, Ruby Rubacuori in Italian) for sex.
Silvio Berlusconi's stand is that the dinners where young girls and women were invited (some of them were just kept at hand in the bunga-bunga army) were pretty “normal soirées” and that his guests “kept their cloths on”. Nicole Minetti was not an organiser (was she his grilfriend at that time, as she declared?). Prosecution thinks he has been running a prostitution ring. So far they have been finding it difficult to reconcile the two different positions.
Sat,
16 March, 2013. After leaving the hospital where he was cured for
an eye conditions Silvio Berlusconi returns to the Senate of
Italy, welcomed by protesters' boos and jeers
Facing
court trial both on tax fraud and sex charges for paying and under-age prostitute (Karima El Mahroug aka Ruby the Heart Stealer), Silvio Berlusconi
chose – at least this is prosecutor of the sex scandal proceedings,
Ilda Boccassini's theory – to seek refuge in hospital, with the
excuse (according to prosecution) of curing a form conjunctivitis called uveitis.
The new look of Silvio Berlusconi (attending to a session of the Senate of Italy)
In the
meanwhile Silvio's lawyers, who managed to see the former Italian
prime minister's «legitimate impediment» recognised, are trying A)
to move the proceedings to Brescia and B) to seek for a «legitimate
impediment» for themselves (for political reasons, since they have to attend to meetings and gatherings, being members of the PdL – People of Liberty party).
Manoeuvres
to gain time (according to the leftist prosecutors). But this isn't
the point.
The
point is that - finally - Silvio Berlusconi last Saturday had to leave
the hospital, in order to participate to a vote in the Senate, where
the speaker was about to be elected.
He was
showing off an unusual pair of sunglasses, proof of the eye condition
the prosecutors refused to believe.
Saturday,
9 March, 2013. Silvio Berlusconi takes refuge from Italian judiciary
in Milan hospital as two of his trials resume and the country gets
stuck in political deadlock.
Last
Saturday Silvio Berlusconi was expected to appear in court – the
Mediaset trial was on, and the Rubygate was also reaching its apex –
but his lawyers gave way to an «escalation of medical
certifications» (as prosecutor Ilda Boccassini put it) in order to
provide the former prime minister of Italy with a «legitimate
impediment», a lawful excuse not to attend.
Cicchitto: «a
Stalinist court that sent Nazi doctors to examine Berlusconi,»
What's
the matter with him? Uveitis, a kind of conjunctivitis that causes
sensitivity to light, headaches, blurred vision and other unpleasant
symptoms. Not many chances that the judiciary and Silvio Belusconi
will get to see eye to eye... The media tycoon has being treated at
Milan's San Raffaele hospital.
It
partially worked, as Silvio's request was accepted by the Ruby sex
scandal case court, but was rejected by «a Stalinist court that sent
Nazi doctors to examine Berlusconi,», as Fabrizio Cicchitto - a top
official in the People of Freedom party (PDL) - put it, and found out
that Berlusconi could easily attend to a trial, perhaps wearing a
fashionable pair of sunglasses. (Translator's note: Historians might
find it remarkable that Nazis and Bolsheviks finally found a way to
join their goals, just for the sake of bringing Silvio down...).
Saturday,
December 22, 2012. Katarina Knezevic gives an interview to an Italian
daily newspaper saying that she will become the wife of Silvio
Berlusconi, not Francesca Pascale.
Katarina Knezevic, Montenegrin model and alleged "fidanzata" of Silvio
The
story with Francesca Pascale is “a heap of crap” according to
22-year-old Katarina Knezevic, the Montenegrin model who swears she is
the real Silvio Berlusconi's fiancée, or “fidanzata” as they say
in Italian.
Francesca
is just an electoral stunt, “the result of an agreement” –
according to the Balkan woman, who was a contestant on Miss
Montenegro pageant – she will never be the wife of Silvio
Berlusconi. “I am still in love with him” she added, in her
interview to the leftist daily newspaper “Il Fatto Quotidiano”
(“The Daily Fact”), “for a man like him I could kill and I'd be
ready to die”.
Silvio with official fiancée, Francesca
Katarina
is “a very dangerous crazy person”, "gypsy" a "runaway
from home", used to say to each other over the phone the
bunga-bunga princesses, Nicole Minetti, Barbara Faggioli, Imane Fadil
(actually on 9 August 2012 was Moroccan Imane who spontaneously told judge Ilda Boccassini that the Montenegrin beauty was Berlusconi's real
girlfriend).
Emilio Fede also told about a dramatic scene at the home of Italy's former
prime minister, when Katarina “made a nasty scene of jealousy”
about the presence of other women, and jumped from the stairs of the
villa, got hurt, and “Silvio Berlusconi had to retire, with
Katarina, in order to console her. Actually there are no public photos of Berlusconi with Katarina Knezevic.
Silvio'sinfatuation of for the young woman was testified also by
Nicole Minetti and Clotilde Strada on a famous phone call,
intercepted during the sex-scandal Rubygate investigations (the video is on our YouTube Channel).
Thursday,
December 20, 2012. Silvio Berlusconi-s owned gossip magazine attempts
to delegitimize a magistrate looking into sex-scandal trial by
denigrate her socks. It's not the first time they resort to this
extreme measure, Italian judges should pay more attention to the
colour of their socks, experts say.
Ilda Boccassini doing work
The
prosecutor in charge of the Rubygate – a case in which Silvio
Berlusconi is indicted for having given money to under-age Karima el
Mahroug (aka Ruby the Heart Stealer) – has appeared on a photo
shoot on Berlusconi's Mondadori-owned “Chi” weekly magazine, a
gossip newspaper.
Judge
Ilda Boccassini is an old enemy of Berlusconi's, since she took over
the place of Antonio Di Pietro, back in 1994, in the “Mani pulite”
(“Clean hands”) investigation.
Silvio and Ilda met up in several occasions, since.
Ilda Boccassini doing shopping
The
gossip weekly portrays the judge as she goes shopping in the centre
of Milan, adding captions in order to deride the magistrate. A list
of her cloths is published, where “multi-coloured striped wool
socks”, costing 21 euro, are exhibited and undrlined in order –
somehow – to belittle the judge. Another photo shows Ilda
Boccassini dropping the butt of a cigarette to the ground. Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera and Rai3 news service accused the media outlet of "hounding" the judge.
A similar technique was used by Canale5 broadcaster staff in 2009, when they hounded judge Raimondo Mesiano, who ordered to Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest to pay 750 million euro (£612m) to Carlo De Benedetti's – arch-enemy of The Knight – CIR, as a compensation in the frame of the Lodo Mondadori, a battle between the two Italian entrepreneurs following the acquisition of publisher Arnoldo Mondadori Editore by Fininvest. Mr Mesiano was followed by the broadcaster's men, his turquoise-coloured socks were exposed as a major offence.
Ruby rebuilding her virginity with Chi's Alfonso Signorini
By the
way, the weekly magazine we started this post with is owned by
Arnoldo Mondadori Editore SpA (company chaired by Silvio's daughter,
Maria Elvira Berlusconi, commonly known as Marina Berlusconi). The paper is also
known for having published topless photos of Kate Middleton earlier
this year, and a picture of prnicess Diana, taken as she was dying,
after a car accident on 31 August 1997. The Director of “Chi”,
Alfonso Signorini, was in charge also when Mediaset (on Canale 5's Kalispéra TV show) tried to prove that Ruby the Heart Stealer was – in reality – a
kind of vocational nun, not a prostitute.
Monday,
December 10, 2012. Key defence witness Karima el Mahroug (aka Ruby
the Heart Stealer) does not show up in court for Silvio Berlusconi's sex-related Rubygate trial. It turns out she's in Mexico.
Are you trying to delay the proceedings? Oh, not at all!
Most
probably Karima el Mahroug (aka Ruby the Heart Stealer) just forgot the court date (Silvio Berlusconi's trial,
he is accused of having paid for her sexual services, as under-age
prostitute) when she decided to travel to Mexico, with her boyfriend
and one-year-old daughter Sofia Aida.
That's
why she was not there last Monday, without notifying her attorney or
sending any documentation to justify the absence from the sex-scandal
trial. Quite
remarkably, Berlusconi's lawyers did not bother to talk to her, just
to make sure they'd be on the same page in the court, just to realise
she was somewhere else.
Wednesday, March 30 2011. The tricky ways of Silvio Berlusconi's lawyers (in the intent of finding any possible way out of the sex scandale dubbed Rubygate).
Niccolò Ghedini, lawyer
As the Prime Minister was showing off in Lampedusa, his army of indefatigable lawyers (led by Niccolò Ghedini) and solicitors were preparing for the mother of all battles, to be fought in few days.
Mara Carfagna, minister
The public prosecutors - who pledged to shut Silvio Berlusconi behind bars, sooner of later – this time are trying to prove that the PM had sex with an under-age dancer, Karima El Mahroug (commonly known as Ruby “Rubacuori”, the Heart Stealer). And paid money for her "sexual services".
More and more people refer to this sex scandal as the Rubygate.
The first hearings will take place on 6 April (if the Parliament is not going to rule the date off on the previous day, when a vote conflict of competence is foreseen), that's why Berlusconi's lawyers are sharpening their knives.
Amongst the trickiest possible weapons, one of the smartest, if you want to drag things out is the following: pack the witness box with people, possible celebrities, to make the greatest possible fuss.
That's why there are almost 80 witnesses (more then a few are women) ready to be heard.
Clooney and Canalis, friends
The defence has called the following witnesses, amongst the others (quite a few are women, beautiful women): Venezuelan showgirl Aida Yespica and Argentinian actress and showgirls Belèn Rodriguez (there is a numerous colony of South American beauties in Italy, as you might expect), Minister of for Equal Opportunity Mara Carfagna (Maxim's "World´s Hottest Politician”), Public Education's Minister Mariastella Gelmini and Foreign Affairs Minister Franco Frattini, Neapolitan singer Mariano Apicella, journalist (and king of gossip) Carlo Rossella, anchorwoman Barbara D'Urso, footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, Hollywood star George Clooney and his girlfriend Elisabetta Canalis.
Quite a list, isn't it? Funny Berlusconi.
A bewildered George Clooney considers “odd” the idea that he could be called as a witness in the bunga-bunga sex scandal trial of Silvio Berlusconi, since he only met the Italian prime minister once (and it was in relation of quite a different topic: raising money for the population of Darfour).
Ilda Boccassini, judge
On the other side of the fence, the judge Ilda Boccassini and her prosecutors have also prepared quite a long list of witnesses (more than 130), but 33 (or perhaps 43, as somebody said) out of them are just, you know, bunga-bunga girls and women.
