I slept with Berlusconi, admits model

LONDON - A lissome model has admitted having sex with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, but she insists it was “never in exchange for money”.

Twentyfive-year-old Maria Ester Garcia Polanco’s candid admission makes her the first of the “bunga bunga” girls to state that she went to bed with the 74-year-old billionaire. The so-called bunga bunga girls are a group of 14 women who are alleged to have had sex with the prime minister.

Hailing from the Dominican Republic, the model said she had sexual relations with Berlusconi out of gratitude as he had paid for medical treatment for her five-year-old daughter and helped her get work as a television showgirl, Daily Telegraph reported.

In an interview in La Repubblica newspaper, she was asked whether she had ever had sexual relations with Berlusconi.

“Yes, but never in exchange for money,” she said, adding that he was “generous and kind”.

Polanco said she had taken part in “five or six” parties at Berlusconis estate, but denied that they degenerated into orgies.

Daily Telegraph noted that her claim contradicts evidence from wire-tapped conversations between women, Berlusconi and his inner circle, in which witnesses stated that starlets, actresses and models danced around poles and performed striptease before being picked for sex with the prime minister.

I dont know if the wire taps are true or not, but all that stuff about orgies and naked women, none of it is true, Polanco was quoted as saying.

To a query on whether Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had been at the villa when Berlusconi allegedly hosted one of his bunga bunga parties, she said: I dont know, I dont follow politics.

Polanco was among a group of women who were allegedly put up in rent-free accommodation in an apartment complex by Berlusconi.

In the past week, they were served with eviction notices after neighbours complained that their involvement in the prostitution probe had lowered the tone of the area.

Twentyeight-year-old Nadia Macri, a prostitute, told the police that the prime minister paid 5,000 euros to have sex with her and Karima El Mahroug, 18, a Moroccan-born erotic dancer known as Ruby the heart stealer.

Prosecutors have claimed that the dancer slept with Berlusconi when she was 17 and have charged Berlusconi with having sex with an underage prostitute. It is an offence that carries a prison sentence of up to three years, the media report said.

Macri said she saw Karima dancing topless and drunk around a pole in an underground room at Berlusconis villa. She said the party April 24 last year later turned into an orgy.

I was with Ruby at the villa and I was witness to sex scenes with the prime minister, she was quoted as telling the police.

Ruby and I were personally paid by Berlusconi 5,000 euros each.