Berlusconi set to start community services with dementia and Alzheimer's disease patients

Wednesday, 30 April 2014. Berlusconi is set to start community services on 9 May, with Alzheimer's disease and dementia patients at Catholic-run Insitute.

As a social carer (doing that job is the way chosen to make him pay his debt with society) Mr Berlusconi is going to do real work, not just sit behind a desk, according Paolo Pigni, head of the Catholic-run Fondazione Sacra Famiglia (Sacred Heart Foundation), in Cesano Boscone, near Milan.

According to Mr Berlusconi community service is “ridiculous, not only for me but for the whole country

The news was disclosed during a press conference where it was also said that the former Italian prime minister will work in the part of the centre where people with dementia and Alzheimer's disease are being taken care of. 

Berlusconi: prostitution thrived at his homes, his private life is “bewildering”, according to judge

Saturday, 28 April 2014. Publishing the motivations of a conviction related to the bunga-bunga parties, a Court in Bari defines Silvio Berlusconi's private life as “bewildering” and states that “beyond a formal appearance of elegant dinners” there was ”a thriving prostitution” orchestrated by Gianpaolo Tarantini for the benefit of the former Italian prime minister.

Gianpaolo Tarantini – a man linked to Mr Berlusconi's, for good and for bad – founded a real “recruitment agency” for women offering services consisting in “sexual performances”, according to the judge Ambrogio Marrone, linked to the so-called bunga-bunga parties held in the Arcore's villa of the Italian billionaire, or in his residence in Rome, Palazzo Grazioli.

Gianpaolo Tarantini (with his wife), the main supplier of women for Berlusconi

The payments for the above mentioned services were called alternatively “envelope”, “gift”, “cachet” or “token”, and were handed over to the girls directly by Silvio Berlusconi, usually on the day of the departure of the call girls, the day after the «sexual encounters, occurred the night before, with the women on duty». 

Berlusconi: attacking the Germans to stand as the saviour of his country seems to be the only tactic to convince Italians to vote for Forza Italia

Saturday, 26 April 2014. While presenting his ailing centre-right Forza Italia party's candidates for the European Parliament elections, Mr Berlusconi seizes the opportunity to show off his abilities to attacks the Germans (in order to hide his weaknesses).

Following his usual MO, Italy's Berlusconi waited the right moment, when the media was listening, to put forward the couple of arguments he managed to pull together for the European elections campaign: accusing – right out of the blue – the Germans to deny the death camps, and recalling an old act of his, when he attacked German MEP Martin Schulz, now a candidate in the incoming elections. 

Everybody's enjoying Silvio Berlusconi's  wisecracks, at Forza Italia press conference
(from ANSA video)

Mentioning the 2003 incident, Mr Berlusconi said he didn't want to offend Schulz (which is evidently untrue), and then added that “according to the Germans, concentration camps never existed.” (which is evidently a lie), in an attempt to please the protest voters, which are expected to show up at European elections, but are unlikely to vote for the re-founded Forza Italia's party (and who are likely to cast they vote in favour of former comedian Beppe Grillo and his Five-Star Movement). 

Berlusconi: here's what he can do and what he can't do during his term as a social worker

Wednesday, 23 April 2014. As Mr Berlusconi signs Milan's Surveillance Court prescriptions' document regarding his term as a social worker, becomes clear to him what he is allowed to do and what he isn't.

Silvio Berlusconi will serve his sentence for tax fraud by helping in at Sacra Famiglia (Sacred Family) elderly people’s home in Cesano Boscone (east of Milan, about 25 miles away from his villa in Arcore), where he signed a documents detailing the term.

You choose the sentence for Silvio Berlusconi, a game by to The Guardian

There are 12 prescriptions in the document, and the former prime minister of Italy can't really complain, as the house arrest – which was one of the options on the table – would have involve more constrictions than his job as a social worker, 4 hours a week.

Berlusconi: even the loyal spokesman Paolo Bonaiuti leaves your sinking Forza Italia for the New Centre-Right?

Sunday, 14 April 2014. As Forza Italia (Go Italy) appears to be losing more and more voters, Paolo Bonaiuti decides to leave the party to follow Berlusconi's former dauphin Angelino Alfano into the Nuovo Centrodestra (New Centre-Right).

“It was a difficult and painful decision,” said the 74-year-old Paolo Bonaiuti, announcing his divorce from Berlusconi's Forza Italia (Go Italy) 2.0, the party re-founded by Berlusconi, when he decided to ditch the PDL (People of Freedom Party), in a virtual night of the long knives to get rid of some of his opponents.

Sometimes it was painful for Mr Bonaiuti (centre) to be on Berlusconi's side.

It's “a decision I have delayed for a long time, but fully motivated by political differences and personal incomprehension that have deepened in the past year.” said Bonaiuti, who has been Berlusconi's public face for a long long time. 

Berlusconi: it's me who sent Dell'Utri to Lebanon, to help Amine Gemayel, because Vladimir Putin asked me to do so.

Sunday, 13 April 2014. The mystery around the disappearance of Berlusconi's aide Marcello Dell'Utri gets more and more mysterious, as the fugitive is backed up by the former prime minister (who - in turn - says the idea was Vladimir Putin's...).

The first news to hit the headlines was that in the run up to a definitive sentence regarding the accusations of links to the Sicilian Mafia, prosecutors weren't able to locate Berlusconi's long-time friend and aide Mr Dell'Utri, and therefore he was declared “fugitive” by the Italian magistrates.

Marcello Dell'Utri and Berlusconi: 

Then Dell'Utri's mobile phone was traced in Beirut, even though his lawyers issued a statement (last Friday) saying that he never went to Lebanon, he was in France, and he never meant to escape, he was just being cured (underwent a angioplasty surgery).

Berlusconi: awaiting the ruling over his sentence, he has been visiting social workers and hospitals

Monday, 7 April 2014. In the run-up to Thursday's discussion over his sentence, Berlusconi visits a social worker and a hospital, just in case.

As Silvio Berlusconi already did in the past (do you remember the uveitis case, almost exactly one year ago?), before any ruling against him, he boast of some minor injuries or diseases, and spends sometime in a hospital.

Berlusconi knows a thing or two, about avoiding trials...

This is just in case he is in the mood to appeal to a “legitimate impediment” and avoid the trial (and killing four birds with one stone: skipping the humiliation, holding up the proceedings, one of his specialities, raising commiseration and gaining visibility, as the Italian media will talk about it).

Berlusconi is portrayed by good friend and full time pensioner George W Bush

Friday, 4 April 2014. 67-year-old George W Bush portrays world leaders – among them 77-year-old Berlusconi – showing how retirement can be a nice period of our lives.

As a world leader George W Bush has collected a few critics (even though he won Mr Berlusconi's long-lasting friendship), here and there, but you have to admit that as a amateur painter he has a knack, as he unveiled an exhibitions of his works, dubbed “The Art of Leadership: A President’s Personal Diplomacy”.

Silvio Berlusconi, as seen by good pal George W Bush

There are 24 characters portrayed by the former president of the USA, like his very father George H W Bush, Russia's president Vladimir Putin, former UK's prime minister Tony Blair, the Dalai Lama and – of course - the disgraced ex-prime minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi (currently out of work as a politician, due to his judicial woes).

Berlusconi and the mystery of the European election's logo

Wednesday, 2 April 2014. The Forza Italia logo for the European elections shows the name “Berlusconi”, but if Silvio can't run as a candidate, who is going to be that?

Silvio Berlusconi can't run as a candidate for public office due to his interdiction to public posts, Italian highest court had made it clear last month, when the former prime minister's lawyer appealed against the ruling, which followed the definitive conviction of the media tycoon for tax fraud. 

Forza Italia's logo and slogan: “"More Italy in Europe, less Europe in Italy”

But, then, who is going to put a face to the Berlusconi name written in big blue letters over the Forza Italia (Go Italy) party's logo for the election, just below the tricolour banner and between a menace printed on the left (“Piu' Italia in Europa”, “More Italy in Europe”), and a wrote bad omen on the right (“Meno Europa in Italia”, “Less Europe in Italy”)?

Berlusconi: is Ruby the Heart Stealer using your money in Mexico and Dubai?

Friday, 28 March 2014. According to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica Berlusconi's favourite night dancer Karima El Mahroug (aka Ruby the Heart Stealer) has started a new life, taking expensive holidays, developing a luxury resort in Mexico and investing in property in the Middle East. Where did she get the money from?

Karima El Mahroug – aka Ruby the Heart Stealer – is a young former erotic dancer (she is now 21) who took part in the bunga-bunga parties in Berlusconi's villa in Arcore and who is believed to have had sex with the owner of the manor in 2010 when she was still under-age (and Mr Berlusconi was sentenced to a 7-year term in jail for having slept with her and for having used his power as Italy's prime minister to try and hide the story).

Ruby the Heart Stealer (real name Karima El-Mahroug) having pretty good time in Mexico (Playa del Carmen's beach)

Now, in 2010 the prosecutors in charge with the sex scandal trial (the result of the so-called Rubygate investigation) intercepted a phone conversation when Ruby – talking to a friend – said that she had received €5 million from the billionaire (which is roughly £4.1m or $6.9).

Later on the Moroccan erotic dancer (and call-girl, if you listen to Milan's judges), said that all that stuff (and other stuff she had been telling the judges) was just a made-up show off and she had been “talking crap”, and so on.