Silvio Berlusconi doesn't like it

Friday, 1 September 2011 (Saint Giles). Silvio Berlusconi confesses he thinks Italy is a “shitty country” and vows to leave the country “that sickens him”. It might be a mutual feeling.

Though many Italians thinks Italy is not such a hospitable place to live in (and many have already left, for a reason or another), few of them thinks it's a “shitty“ country.

At least that's what president Silvio Berlusconi said during a telephone conversation (held on 13 July) to Valter Lavitola, a man believed to have extorted – together with the businessman Giampaolo Tarantini and his wife Angela Devenuto – at least €500,000 from the Italian prime minister (about £440,000).

Mr Tarantini is a supplier of women for Berlusconi's feasts, he told the police, having provided 30 girls for bunga bunga parties held in Rome.

Giampaolo Tarantini, friend or foe?

At least six women spent the night at Berlusconi's Roman residence, palazzo Grazioli, as a part of the sex scandal that led to the Rubygate inquiry.

The conversations with Lavitola, an editor for the newspaper Avanti! and an entrepreneur in the fish sector, have been published also by the (so far) pro-Berlusconi internet site Libero-news.it (click here).

Lavitola: fish and newspapers

They took place at the peak of a financial markets' crisis, few days after a court in Milan condemned a Berlusconi's firm to pay €560m in compensation to his rival De Benedetti, for bribing a judge in the takeover of Italy's largest publisher, Mondadori.

They were – and they are – hard times for Silvio, but still he should not call Italy names...