Silvio Berlusconi had 'five types of women at parties'

After inviting a friend to attend one of the parties at Mr Berlusconi’s mansion near Milan, Nicole Minetti, who also referred to the 75-year-old medica tycoon as the “love of my life”, allegedly said it was important that the young woman be briefed on what would take place.

“You will see total desperation,” she told the woman, Melania Tumini, in an apparent reference to the way in which the models and would-be actresses competed for Mr Berlusconi’s attention.

Miss Minetti, a television starlet-turned-politician on trial for procuring high-class escorts for the former prime minister, told her friend that five types of women attended the “bunga bunga” parties.

“I tell you, there are five anthropological categories – there are the sluts, the South Americans who come from the favelas (slums) and don’t speak a word of Italian, the more serious ones, others who are somewhere in the middle, and then there’s me, and I do what I do.”

In another call, Lisa Barizonte, a showgirl, told Miss Minetti that she would bring her a teacher’s uniform to wear for one of the parties.

“Perfect, I’ll bring garter belts and reading glasses, and when I take everything off I’ll have sexy underwear underneath,” Miss Minetti said, according to audio recordings.

Mr Berlusconi was also referred to as the “boss of bosses” - a term normally reserved for mafia dons - by Miss Minetti.

The 50,000 alleged phone calls are part of a huge stack of evidence which prosecutors are using against the former premier in a trial in Milan in which he is accused of abuse of office and paying for sex with a teenage nightclub dancer who was allegedly working as an under age prostitute.

Mr Berlusconi claimed last week that he held only “elegant dinners” at which young women who were “by nature exhibitionists” put on “burlesque contests”.

He denies the charges against him.

But Karima El Mahroug, the Moroccan-born dancer who was 17 when the scandal broke, said he was very worried that her true age would be found out. Paying a woman under the age of 18 for sex is a criminal offence in Italy.

Miss El Mahroug, known by her stage name as Ruby the Heart Stealer, claimed that the prime minister was prepared to pay her 47,000 euros (£38,000) a week to buy her silence.

Mr Berlusconi’s trial in Milan, which started a year ago, continues.

In a separate development on Tuesday, Italy’s highest court ruled that Mr Berlusconi paid “substantial” sums of money to the Sicilian Mafia as a guarantee against him or his family being kidnapped.

The court said Mr Berlusconi dealt with the mob through a middleman, Marcello Dell’Utri, a long-time friend and later a senator in his party.

The money was paid to Cosa Nostra in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Mr Berlusconi, at the time a wealthy businessman, feared the threat of kidnap and ransom.

It was “an agreement of a protective and collaborative nature” in which Mr Berlusconi was the “victim” of mafia intimidation, a panel of eminent judges said.

Mr Dell’Utri was convicted of mafia association and given a seven year prison sentence in 2004 but subsequently appealed.

In March the supreme court threw out the case on technical grounds and called for a new trial.