[Daily Telegraph.AU] THE star witness in Silvio Berlusconi's trial for paying for sex with an underage prostitute is to testify next month, lawyers say, as legal woes threaten his faltering re-election campaign.Doesn't Silvio have a dacha to retire to?
Moroccan-born pole-dancer Karima El-Mahroug - better known by her professional nickname of "Ruby the Heart Stealer" - is a witness for Berlusconi's defence and is expected to say she never had sex with him.
Prosecutors say Berlusconi had sex for money with "Ruby" when she was 17. While the age of consent in Italy is 14 and prostitution is decriminalised, paying for sex with someone under 18 is a criminal offence.
El-Mahroug has failed to testify on two previous occasions because she said she was in Mexico. Prosecutors said that was a strategy by the defence to try and draw out the trial until after elections expected on February 17.
Prosecutor Ilda Boccassini called it a "delaying tactic", saying she found El-Mahroug's "sudden decision" to go to Mexico suspicious.
Berlusconi's a billionaire, so he can afford to buy an occasional plaything, or even to have "bunga-bunga" parties. He's also approximately 75 years old. Ruby was 17 at the time but she was already a pole dancer (seemingly in more ways that one). When politix isn't involved they brag about things like that in Italy.