London: Adding to woes of Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi facing trial on charges of paying for sex with a teenager, new audiotapes of his supposed dalliance with a high-end prostitute at his Rome residence have surfaced.
"I'm going to take a shower too. If you finish before me, wait for me on the big bed," a man purported to be the Italian Prime Minister can be heard saying in the audiotapes posted online by Italian newspaper La Repubblica and weekly magazine L'Espresso
"Which bed? Putin's?" enquires his companion, show-girl Patrizia D'Addario. "Oh, how cute, the one with the curtains."
The reason why the bed is named after the Russian Prime Minister remains a mystery. But the audiotapes offer a tantalising glimpse into how Berlusconi reportedly spent the night of November 4, 2008, when the world was eagerly waiting to see whether Barack Obama would become the first black President of the US, the Independent Online reported.
According to the transcripts of the tapes, Berlusconi phoned D'Addario the day after their assignation on the Putin bed.
He marvels at how he has got through a busy day, despite the lack of sleep, while D'Addario tells him she's lost her voice.
Berlusconi's lawyer Niccolo Ghedini, however, was quick to dispute the veracity of the tapes and dismissed them as being "without any merit, completely improbable and the product of the imagination".
The 74-year-old Italian leader has been dogged by sex scandals since his wife announced in May last year that she was divorcing him, tipped over the edge by his presence at the 18th birthday party of an aspiring model.
Next came a flurry of pictures of naked people cavorting at his Sardinian villa, and then details of his alleged dealings with escort girls emerged during a probe into supposed prostitution rackets in the southern city of Bari.
According to prosecutors, Berlusconi paid for sex with Moroccan teen Karima El Mahroug 13 times last year, when she was 17, at his villa near Milan.
It is also alleged that he then tried to cover up the alleged crime by abusing power.
The billionaire tycoon turned politician has a long history of legal entanglements dating back to when he first entered politics in the early 1990s but has always either been exonerated or seen his trials expire.
Last month Berlusconi attended a court hearing for the first time in eight years for a separate fraud investigation linked to his company Mediatrade. Judges have not yet decided whether that case should go to trial.
He is currently defending himself in the trail on charges of paying for sex with the underage prostitute.
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