WHEN Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, broadcast a statement on pension reform in 2003 the announcer who introduced him on television caught his eye.
He sent Virginia Sanjust di Teulada a huge bunch of roses and gardenias, invited her to lunch at his office and then presented her with a diamond bracelet. Over the months that followed, they met often and he showered her with diamonds and cash.
Speaking for the first time last week, Sanjust, 32, described the devastating consequences of her “platonic love” for Berlusconi, 72, and the scandal it created. She said he had been consumed by the power his £4 billion fortune bestowed and should give up the relationships with young women which have ensured that his private life is high on the political agenda as Italians vote in European and local elections this weekend.
In an interview on one of his own television stations, Berlusconi rejected comparisons with the scandal that engulfed former President Bill Clinton over his affair with Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern.
“The American press did well to wage a campaign against Bill Clinton because it’s true that he had lied,” he said. “I didn’t. And what has been said against me is only slander and untruth.”
Berlusconi’s wife, Veronica Lario, ignited a political fire-storm last month when she demanded a divorce and alleged that he “frequents underage girls” after he attended the 18th birthday party of Noemi Letizia, a budding model. The prime minister denied that he had ever had “spicy relationships” with minors.
Sanjust was a 26-year-old divorcée with a son aged four when he spotted her. “Berlusconi took me to heart,” she told Oggi magazine, confirming that he had given her bracelets and money. One payment in June 2007 was for £44,000.
“When he phoned me he’d tell me everything he was doing, he’d ask me if I needed something, he was very kind.
But he never went beyond that.” She added that he often told her: “I could be your grandfather.”
In one of their first conversations, he confided: “You know, Virginia, I have lost faith a little bit.”
Sanjust replied: “Of course, you’re surrounded by a sea of vampires who always want something in exchange or who just want your money.”
Yet she has no hesitation in criticising him now. “Perhaps he should admit that he made a mistake, that he was swept away by the power of money,” she said.
The relationship became public last year after her former husband, Federico Armati, an intelligence officer, filed a lawsuit accusing Berlusconi and Sanjust of conspiring to have him sacked. A Rome judge shelved the case in January.
Sanjust resigned from her television channel amid rumours that she was Berlusconi’s mistress. She lost custody of her son, who was entrusted to Armati, and suffered a “psychological collapse”. She said: “I was labelled mad, I was locked up in mental hospitals and forced to take drugs.”
She recently found work in a clothes shop in Rome near the Vatican, but left that job last week. She has given all Berlusconi’s presents away “to people poorer than me”.
Sanjust now follows the teachings of a Balinese guru and says that sex means nothing to her. “Sex is in the past for me, it’s only a memory. Platonic love, like the one I had for Berlusconi, is much more important,” she said.
“Can I say something provocative? Berlusconi is the most impotent man in the world, because the power the prime minister has is a false power if it’s not accompanied by faith.”
Despite Sanjust’s experience, countless other young women flock to Berlusconi’s side. According to the magazine L’espresso, he invited 50 women, including actresses and showgirls, to spend New Year’s Eve, 2008 at his luxurious Villa Certosa on Sardinia’s Emerald Coast.
Guests confided that they had been brought in on private flights and each given two onyx bracelets shaped like tortoises (the villa’s symbol) along with silver and gold rings, a butterfly-shaped pendant and a gold necklace.
Twenty guests were allegedly paid £1,300 a day to be there and several were picked by Sabina Began, a model and actress who, according to the gossip columns, sat on Berlusconi’s knee as he sang to her at another party on election night last year at his home in Rome.
Contacted by The Sunday Times, Began declined to answer questions, saying: “I’m on the set of a film, I’m too busy.” Niccolo Ghedini, Berlusconi’s lawyer and fellow MP, has described her account of events at the Villa Certosa as baseless.
Berlusconi’s partying at the villa, where he likes to blend his private and public lives by mixing actresses with politicians, executives from his media empire and businessmen, provoked further controversy after prosecutors seized 200 photographs of guests in the grounds of the villa for alleged violation of privacy.
Taken by Antonello Zappadu, a Sardinian photographer, in May last year, some of them reportedly show young women sunbathing topless, two girls taking a shower in the open air and caressing each other for the amusement of fellow guests and Berlusconi giving young women a guided tour around the estate.
Last Friday El Pais, the Spanish newspaper, published five photographs depicting topless women and a naked man by a swimming pool at the villa, their faces obscured.
Mirek Topolanek, the former Czech prime minister, confirmed he was the man by the pool, but added: “It is clearly also the result of photo-montage.”
Berlusconi called the pictures innocent, adding: “Do you take a shower dressed? These girls were bathing in a whirlpool bath inside a private home and they were assaulted in a scandalous way.”
The prime minister is facing investigation for possible abuse of office because of 100 other photographs taken by Zappadu in the same month. They show guests arriving at his villa on official flights, including one with the singer Mariano Apicella and an unnamed female flamenco dancer on board. Berlusconi’s lawyer said he had broken no laws and the pair came to entertain Topolanek.
Elisa Alloro, a former show-girl turned television interviewer and a frequent guest at Villa Certosa, came to Berlusconi’s defence last week in a memoir entitled We, Silvio’s Girls about their friendship.
She met him when she interviewed him in 2004 and wrote that “every minute spent with him is like a divine gift”.
“Berlusconi likes to hold dinners and invite friends and have fun and he does it at his own expense. Even during a formal dinner he likes to crack a joke or sing a song,” said Alloro, who is standing for his Party of Freedom in local elections in Reggio Emilia, near Bologna.
Asked how he behaved towards women, she replied: “He’s very loyal and honest and generous and always finds time to listen to you.” It was preposterous to claim that there was anything untoward about Berlusconi’s relationship with the teenage Letizia, she said.
Berlusconi has said that he has known Letizia for years and that he met her through her father, a political activist. But Letizia’s former boyfriend, Gino Flaminio, claims the prime minister telephoned her out of the blue after he saw some photographs she had sent to one of his television stations in the hope of finding work.
In his first call to her Naples home, Berlusconi reportedly admired her “angelic face” and urged her to keep her “purity”.
She has said that she calls the prime minister “Papi” (Daddy) and remains a virgin.
“Please,” Alloro exclaimed. “Berlusconi doesn’t need Noemi’s pictures to pick up a girl. You have no idea how many he receives. I don’t want to disparage Noemi but she’s not Miss World. It’s rubbish to say that Berlusconi saw her pictures and asked her to come and see him.”
Alloro recalled seeing Letizia at Villa Certosa in January, a few days after a New Year’s Eve party there. “It was the first time she had come to the villa and we were at a table with 40 other guests. I didn’t talk to her but she wasn’t the centre of attention,” Alloro said.
Asked about the scandal engulfing Letizia, Sanjust sounded a warning note for the teenager.
“I feel compassion for Noemi,” she said. “I see a little bit of me in her and of what happened to me.”
Scandal vote
Italians vote in both European and local elections this weekend in what political commentators have called a “referendum” on Silvio Berlusconi in the wake of the controversy over Noemi Letizia.
Opinion polls are banned in the run-up to elections but many voters say they are sickened by the scandal.
Berlusconi has claimed his popularity has been virtually untouched and has predicted a share of the vote of 43%-45% for his conservative Party of Freedom. His coalition ally, the Northern League, is expected to do well.
The opposition Democratic party faces strong competition from the smaller Italy of Values party.
