Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was found not guilty on Wednesday of witness tampering in a trial relating to sexually oriented “bunga bunga” parties he held at his villa near Milan while in office.
The six-year trial is the third and probably the last in a scandal that made headlines around the world in 2010, when Berlusconi – as incumbent prime minister – was accused of paying for sex with a girl underage. Eventually he was acquitted.
In the third trial, Berlusconi was accused of paying witnesses to lie in previous trials. Prosecutors had asked for a six-year prison sentence for him, as well as $10.7 million in damages. 28 other people, including the woman at the center of the scandal, Karima el-Mahroug, were also found not guilty on Wednesday.
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“I am very happy,” el-Mahroug told reporters after hearing the verdict. “I just need a moment to absorb this fact, to believe it.”
Berlusconi was not present at the reading of the verdict. His lawyer, Federico Cecconi, called the verdict, which formally declared that no crime had been committed, “the fullest acquittal we could get”.
Karima El Mahroug, aka Ruby Rubacuori, one of the girls who attended the infamous Bunga Bunga parties, presents her book to the prosecutor Tiziana Siciliano, right in Italy, on February 15, 2023. (Claudio Furlan/LaPresse via AP)
The first trials took place while Berlusconi still wielded considerable power as prime minister, raising concern among security officials that he had made himself vulnerable to extortion by harboring young women at his villa.
The 86-year-old three-time former prime minister currently heads the third party in Italy’s right-wing ruling coalition, whose popularity has declined significantly since its heyday to around 6 percent now, according to polls.
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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni welcomed Wednesday’s verdict, saying it “puts an end to a long judicial affair that has had important repercussions on Italian political and institutional life”.
The Meloni administration this week decided to remove the government as an injured party in the case, to avoid creating an awkward political dynamic in the event of guilty sentences.
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Berlusconi’s defense described the dinners, dating back to 2010, as elegant evenings; prosecutors said these were sex-fueled gatherings that women were paid to attend and in which witnesses described the showgirls defiantly stripping to the then Italian leader.
Both Berlusconi and el-Mahroug, who was 17 at the time, denied ever having sex with each other, and el-Mahroug, now 30, says she never worked as a prostitute.
