Silvio Berlusconi triumphs in Italy's elections despite allegations

The Telegraph ^ | 6/23/2009 | Nick Squires in Rome

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Silvio Berlusconi enjoyed a resounding victory in provincial elections after Italians overlooked the allegations of sleaze swirling around the Italian prime minister.

The prime minister also faced down accusations that he slept with a prostitute at his mansion in Rome, one of the many embarrassing claims about his private life to have emerged.

PM Berlusconi and wife

The scandal took a further twist on Tuesday when a transsexual television presenter claimed to have acted as a "talent scout" for young women who were subsequently invited to Mr Berlusconi's parties.

But Mr Berlusconi hit back. "I've never paid for a woman," he told Chi magazine.

"I've never understood what satisfaction there would be if there was not the pleasure of conquest."

Asked by the magazine whether he had ever feared entrapment by a prostitute, he replied: "If I suspected a person of something like that, I'd run a thousand miles."

In a key test of whether Mr Berlusconi had been harmed politically by a series of scandals involving his links to a string of young women, Italians voted in local elections and handed nine more provinces to his centre-Right People of Freedom party.

For Mr Berlusconi, 72, it was a welcome respite. He has been on the defensive ever since his wife announced two months ago that she wanted a divorce, citing his selection of young starlets and showgirls for European Parliament elections and his presence at the birthday party of an 18-year-old lingerie model.

Since then, three young women have told Italian newspapers they were recruited to attend parties at the premier's residences, with two of them claiming they were paid to attend by an acquaintance of Mr Berlusconi.

Businessman Giampaolo Tarantini, 35, is being investigated in Bari for allegedly "abetting prostitution" by recruiting young