Silvio Berlusconi’s family scrap payments to women who attended bunga bunga parties

Silvio Berlusconi’s family has ended €2,500 (£2,100) a month payments made to regular female guests at the late politician’s notorious bunga bunga sex parties, it has emerged.

About 20 women, including models and dancers, had received the payments from Berlusconi, according to Italian media reports. Some continued after his death in June, aged 86.

But the former prime minister’s relatives have now opted to scrap the remittances, the Corriere della Sera newspaper reported.

The family also informed a number of women who lived in luxurious apartments provided by Berlusconi they would have to leave by the end of the year, according to Italian media.

Lawyers and representatives for Berlusconi’s family could not be reached for comment by the Telegraph.

According to Berlusconi, the payments to the women were intended to compensate them for the damage to their reputations caused by their appearance in the billionaire’s trials linked to the allegedly promiscuous parties he organised at his residences in Milan and Sardinia.

The former prime minister always insisted the so-called bunga bunga parties were elegant dinners.

Berlusconi went on trial several times facing charges of bribery, exploiting prostitutes and paying for sex with an underage woman, in relation to the parties.

Bought the women cars and gifts

In the latest of the trials, which lasted six years, Berlusconi was accused of paying out hundreds of thousands of euros in bribes to women so that they would lie about the nature of his parties.

He allegedly bought the women cars and gifts, gave them cash and paid for their rent.

The billionaire media-tycoon turned politician and his lawyers had always insisted the gifts and money were compensation for the reputational damage that the women had suffered as a result of being swept up in the bunga bunga scandal, which helped bring Berlusconi down as prime minister in 2011.

His lawyers said he was out on trial simply “for the crime of generosity”. Berlusconi was acquitted in February.

The acquittal was the culmination of a long legal battle that began in 2010 when Berlusconi, then prime minister, was accused of abuse of power by protecting Karima El-Mahroug, a young Moroccan nightclub dancer.

The woman, known by her stage name Ruby, had been arrested for petty theft, but Berlusconi intervened to have her released, falsely claiming that she was the niece of Hosni Mubarak, then president of Egypt.

The following year, Berlusconi was accused of having paid Ruby, who in 2010 was 17 years old, for sex.

Sentenced at first in 2013 to seven years in prison, he was finally acquitted in March 2015 by a higher court.