Silvio Berlusconi spurns a condom – at least that’s what new tapes of a hooker’’s alleged dealings with the Italian PM which hit the internet suggest.
The Sun reports, in one of the tapes, Patrizia D”Addario, 42, recoils as a business tycoon linked to Berlusconi’’s parties tells her: “He will give you a present.
“Oh, another thing [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Silvio Berlusconi’
New sex tape reveals Berlusconi â€doesn’t like using condomsâ€
July 22nd, 2009 |
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UN faces $5bn aid gap in recession
July 22nd, 2009 |
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Half-yearly report says members countries have less funds to spare while poverty is on the increase in developing world
The United Nations is warning of a $4.8bn (£2.9bn) shortfall in funding to tackle humanitarian crises in the world’s poorest countries, as the credit crunch leaves developed world governments with little cash to spare.
Delivering its half-yearly update about emergency fund-raising, John Holmes, of the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that while the UN’s emergency appeals had received more funds than at the same time last year, the economic crisis was exacerbating poverty and increasing need.
“It is clear that the global recession puts pressure on the aid budgets of all donor governments, but of course it puts immeasurably more pressure on crises-stricken people in poor countries,” he said.
The UN has raised a total of $4.6bn over the past six months for its humanitarian appeals – but Holmes said it had identified $4.8bn of “unmet needs” – the biggest gap ever.
Holmes compared the shortfall in funding for the world’s poorest people with the vast sums spent by the US, UK and other developed countries on bailing out their banking sectors.
“If just a fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars recently committed by governments to private financial institutions were allocated to humanitarian action, these appeals could already be fully funded, and those in need could be getting the best available protection and assistance, on time,” Holmes said.
He singled out Kenya, Palestine and Zimbabwe as states whose financing needs have become more severe over the past six months, and said the UN is keen to raise more resources during the rest of the year.
Holmes said humanitarian needs in just one country, Somalia, had decreased recently – but only because a food aid project had been cancelled due to rising insecurity for the staff working on the ground.
Aid agencies have repeatedly sounded the alarm since the global downturn began last year about the disproportionate impact on poor countries, which often rely heavily on export earnings.
World trade volumes have collapsed over the past six months, and unlike their richer counterparts, governments in the developing world find it hard to raise funds on international capital markets. Only a small proportion of the funding pledged at the G20 summit in London earlier this year to combat the impact of the crisis was targeted at the world’s poor.
Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi came under international pressure in the run-up to the G8 summit he hosted in L’Aquila earlier this month, after cutting Italy’s aid budget.
At a recent conference in New York, organised by the president of the UN general assembly, member-states pledged to offer extra aid, but little has so far been forthcoming.
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Guardian Daily: Vince Cable on bank reform
July 22nd, 2009 |
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The Conservatives would scrap the Financial Services Authority and put the Bank of England back in control of City regulation, David Cameron has confirmed.
The Liberal Democrats’ Treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, says the FSA should be retained, but says the government has failed to introduce the radical reforms needed to avert another crash.
Legal affairs correspondent Afua Hirsch looks at the problems facing Trevor Phillips, head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
John Hooper reports from Rome on the latest sex scandal facing Silvio Berlusconi, this time surrounding a tape purported to be a recording of pillow talk between the Italian prime minister and a prostitute.
John Crace roadtests a new cycle-hire scheme being pioneered in Bristol.
And Mike Selvey celebrates England’s victory over Australia in the second Test at Lord’s.
Escort’s tapes ‘reveal night with Berlusconi’
July 21st, 2009 |
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• Spotlight back on private life after L’Aquila summit
• Tapes claim Italian PM sought menage-a-trois
If Silvio Berlusconi thought he’d shaken off the furore over his alleged use of escort girls, he was in for a nasty surprise today.
The Italian prime minister has successfully deflected and sidestepped lurid allegations about his supposed liaisons in recent weeks, helped by some timely international summitry which let him demonstrate his statesmanship, not to mention his commitment to dealing with the aftermath of the L’Aquila earthquake.
But today it was all about call girls, giant beds and the suggestion of a menage-a-trois, after a left-leaning news magazine, L’Espresso, posted “pillow talk” recordings that an escort said she made during a night with the septuagenarian Italian leader.
The escort, Patrizia D’Addario, claims the tapes relate to the night of 4 November last year, when the leaders of the world were holding their breath, waiting to see if Americans would elect their first black president.
Berlusconi, apparently, had other things on his mind.
According to D’Addario, Berlusconi was entertaining her in the bedroom of his magnificent Rome residence, Palazzo Grazioli. In one fragment of conversation, Berlusconi appears to direct D’Addario to wait for him in bed while he showers. In another conversation, recorded the next day, she protests to Giampaolo Tarantini, the businessman who allegedly set her up with the Italian prime minister, that she had not received the €5,000 (£4,300) she was expecting.
In a third snippet, it is claimed she confides to the same intermediary that Berlusconi asked her whether next time they met she would agree to a menage-a-trois with another of his girlfriends.
“He said that he has a girlfriend and would like to have me lick this girlfriend,” D’Addario says, according to the posted recordings.
The Berlusconi camp moved quickly to rubbish the tapes. Berlusconi’s spokesman said: “This seesaw of gossip is not getting anywhere”. A spokesman for his party, the Freedom People, called the release of the recordings “pathetic”. An attorney, Niccolo Ghedini, said they were “without any merit, completely improbable and the fruit of invention”.
The content of the conversations was reported in broad terms last month, but the words themselves, some pronounced in what sound like the distinctively nasal tones of Italy’s prime minister, are likely to have an effect no news report can rival.
One of the conversations appears to back claims that Italy’s leader has a giant bed with a connection, as yet unclear, to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
After an exchange in which the prime minister seems to be offering a present to D’Addario, he says to her: “I’m taking a shower.” He then asks her to wait on the big bed. She asks which one. He replies: “Putin’s”.
The tapes also include ammunition for Berlusconi’s supporters, however. He has said that he has never paid for sex, and insisted that he was unaware the women who attended his parties were being rewarded. In the telephone call with Tarantini, D’Addario tells him that things went well, adding: “No envelope, though.”
There is another respect in which the recordings could help Berlusconi. They imply that the 72 year-old billionaire politician, who has had prostate cancer, nevertheless has remarkable sexual endurance. It remains to be seen if that will inspire more admiration than censure among ordinary Italians.
D’Addario tells Tarantini “we didn’t sleep a wink” and when Berlusconi calls her later, she is heard to say that she is not tired even though she didn’t sleep. “Only my voice has gone,” she says. He replies: “Why? We didn’t shout.”
On the recording, both the voices sound gruff.
D’Addario, who stood as a candidate in local elections this year for a group close to the prime minister’s party, has given the recordings to prosecutors investigating Tarantini.
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Tapes revive Berlusconi furore
July 20th, 2009 |
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Lawyers for prime minister deny Italian website clips are of him and and an escort in conversation
The furore over Silvio Berlusconi’s private life was revived today when an Italian newspaper website produced what it said was a recording of the Italian prime minister as he prepared to get into bed with an escort.
La Repubblica posted recordings that the escort, Patrizia D’Addario, said she made during and after two visits to Palazzo Grazioli, Berlusconi’s residence in the centre of Rome, in November last year.
In one fragment of conversation, Berlusconi appears to direct D’Addario to wait for him in bed while he showers. In another, she protests to the man who set her up with the Italian prime minister that she had not received the €5,000 (£4,300) she was expecting.
In a third snippet, it is claimed she confides to the same intermediary that Berlusconi asked her whether next time they met she would agree to a menage a trois with another of the prime minister’s girlfriends.
“He said that he has a girlfriend and would like to have me licked by this girlfriend,” D’Addario says, according to the posted recordings.
Berlusconi’s lawyer Niccolo Ghedini disputed the authenticity of the recordings. He said they were “without any merit, completely improbable and the fruit of invention.” A spokesman for Berlusconi’s governing Freedom People movement described the dissemination of the tapes as “pathetic”.
The content of the conversations was reported in broad terms last month, but this is the first time that the alleged recordings themselves have been made available, along with full transcripts.
One of them, claimed to have been made by D’Addario in the prime minister’s bedroom, appeared to back up reports that Berlusconi’s guests were entertained on a giant bed, which according to the transcripts, is in some way associated with the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin. The recording is of poor quality, however.
After an exchange in which the prime minister seems to be offering D’Addario a present, the conversation continues as follows:
SB: I’m taking a shower too. And then, then you wait for me on the big bed if you finish before me.
PD: Which big bed? Putin’s.
SB: Putin’s.
PD: Oh, how lovely! The one with the curtains.
In a recording allegedly made the following morning, D’Addario rings the man who introduced her to Berlusconi. She tells him: “We didn’t get a wink of sleep”. But adds, “no envelope, though”.
She said that she had received: “I don’t know, a little turtle”, but not “the envelope – 5000 euros”, mentioned by a friend who had also visited Palazzo Grazioli.
The allegations about Berlusconi’s private life have escalated since he was accused of consorting with minors after attending the 18th birthday party of Noemi Letizia, an aspiring model who called the 72-year-old “Papi” during phone conversations. That was enough to push Berlusconi’s wife to ask for a divorce.
Since then, details of his alleged dealings with escort girls emerged by chance, during a separate investigation into supposed prostitution rackets in the southern city of Bari.
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Italy’s minimalist G8 summit
July 11th, 2009 |
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By Bridget Kendall
BBC diplomatic correspondent, L’Aquila
Switching the venue of this year’s G8 summit to an active earthquake zone sounded like a hostage to fortune.
Why invite the world’s most powerful leaders to perch on the same precarious spot of the Earth’s crust which in April killed 300 people and left 60,000 others homeless
Just think what global chaos would ensue if – mid session – the ground opened up and swallowed them all.
When the town of L’Aquila was rocked by a new – though less powerful – set of tremors last Friday, the summit’s prospects began to look decidedly dicey.
‘A good idea’
In the town centre many buildings were already cracked and cordoned off. On every corner caved-in roofs and ripped-out walls hinted at the prospect of new collapses to come. It felt as though at any minute it could all start to shake again.
I had visions of us journalists stuck, incommunicado and cowering under tables in the so-called media village. Reporters turned refugees, caught in a new disaster zone, while summit leaders were airlifted out to Rome.
But in the event, nothing happened. Not a tremble.
To my surprise earthquake survivors living in local tent camps thought the summit an excellent idea.
What better way to draw attention to the fact their lives had been reduced to rubble, than to pull in the likes of George Clooney and other celebrity hangers-on who tend to pitch up at major summits.
"At one formal function, the eyes of a weary Barack Obama glazed over and his shoulders slumped. Not just us hacks, it seems, were getting by on hard mattresses with very little sleep"
"My home won’t get repaired for another three or four years. The entire tower block fell on top of it. Any publicity is welcome," said one woman, Anna, sitting with her neighbours under a sun parasol outside her blue canvas home.
The pathway between the tents was lined with drying washing and children’s bicycles. A hand-painted notice, decorated in big childish crayon, announced it was Butterfly Row.
There was also Cat Alley, and Moon Street, all clearly marked. An air of semi-permanence had set in.
Roughing it
In keeping with the earthquake tragedy, the summit itself had an air of austerity. So different from the usual lavish attempts to promote a country at its best.
President Putin revamped an entire 18th Century palace in St Petersburg. Tony Blair took over one of Scotland’s grandest hotels.
But Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi commandeered the local barracks of the Finance Police and required world leaders and their delegations to sleep in dormitories on site.
"How is the accommodation for VIPs" I asked one UN official.
He sighed and replied wearily: "It’s not quite what we’re used to."
He was lucky. Some of the journalists unable to find places to stay locally were reduced to begging space among the tents of the earthquake refugees. Our BBC team drove back nightly over the mountains to a village two hours away.
Also minimalist and unpredictable were the communications facilities. It was almost impossible to find out schedules or contact numbers for delegations. The only truly reliable information was the time of the prime minister’s late afternoon press conference.
That you could not avoid. On large screens, beaming down at you would be the unmistakable jovial grin of Mr Berlusconi.
And if you did miss it, never mind. It was played over and over again.
Press conferences by those with critical views, like the so-called G5 group of emerging countries (India, Brazil, China, South Africa and Mexico)seemed to occur with almost no prior warning or publicity.
It was almost as though these Asian and Latin American giants were G8 dissidents, deliberately kept to the fringe.
The same world
One morning we arrived at the media centre to find the broadband connection we were using had been cut off. Local Italian technicians claimed it was on the orders of the Italian authorities.
A few hours later it was restored. But in situations like this, you soon start to get paranoid. Was this an attempt to control our output to what could be monitored
Probably not, but – instead of the usual eagerness for media coverage – it felt distinctly odd to be prevented from telling the world what was going on.
In some ways this new "bare bones" G8 style suits the mood of the moment.
For a change the journalists were not kept 50 miles away from the leaders, or worse – as has happened – sequestered on a separate island.
The summiteers were a short walk away. It felt as though we could keep them under our gaze.
At one formal function, the eyes of a weary Barack Obama glazed over and his shoulders slumped. Not just us hacks, it seems, were getting by on hard mattresses with very little sleep.
This year, in L’Aquila, we were all part of the same world.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Berlusconi denies summit chaos
July 7th, 2009 |
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Italian PM says Guardian’s report of pressure over chaotic summit preparations ‘a colossal blunder by a small newspaper’
Silvio Berlusconi has attempted to fend off allegations that preparations for the G8 summit have been so chaotic that Italy’s membership of the group was being called into question.
The Italian prime minister said a report in the Guardian, citing senior western officials as saying the US had taken the lead in managing the agenda for the summit, was “a colossal blunder by a small newspaper”.
Officials from G8 countries, who did not want to be named, told the Guardian that in the absence of Italian initiatives for the summit, Washington had arranged conference calls among the “sherpas” – the diplomats preparing the summit. There was also fierce criticism of Italy’s failure to deliver on promises of overseas aid.
The Guardian today issued a statement saying it wholeheartedly rejected any suggestion that the news story was unfounded.
“I hope that the Guardian is expelled from the great newspapers of the world,” said the foreign minister, Franco Frattini. “What the Guardian says is a joke – nonsense.”
The defence minister, Ignazio La Russa, suggested a boycott of the paper because of the report.
An Italian foreign ministry spokesman said there had been a misunderstanding about the “sherpa” phone calls. He said one had been organised by the US, but it had been aimed at organising a G20 summit in Pittsburgh in September.
The spokesman said a food security initiative, reported in the Guardian to have been led by the US, had in fact been authored by Italy.
Italy circulated a paper on food security last year, but the Guardian understands that the initiative in its current form, aimed at supporting farmers in developing countries, was put together under US leadership. The “sherpa” calls led by the US were principally concerned with tomorrow’s G8 meeting in L’Aquila, the Guardian’s sources confirmed.
There is increasing pressure from the US and rising powers such as China, India and Brazil for the G8 “rich countries club” to be expanded and for European membership to be consolidated.
Bruce Jones, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington, said in the next three years European states would come under pressure to decide among themselves who should represent the EU in the G8 or any larger successor group, as well as in the UN security council and the International Monetary Fund.
All three institutions are due to be reformed to make them more representative of the 21st-century balance of power, and that is likely to bring a dilution of European influence, with some countries having to drop out. “There is already frustration with the Europeans that they have not sorted these things out,” Jones said.
Britain also came under fire for its organisation of the G20 meeting in London in April, to which the Spaniards, the Dutch, the Thais and the Ethiopians were invited at the last moment. American officials complained that the expanded guest list made the forum more unwieldy and the G20 format less attractive.
Jones added that said the leading role played by the US, even though it was not hosting tomorrow’s summit, was a sign of things to come. “The criticism of the Italians is more than warranted, but there is a broader point here. It is inevitable that the US will play a more central role in the management of an expanded G8. If there are going to be many more players at the table, not all of them western democracies, there’s ever more need for a strong central core. That can only be provided by the US.”
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The anti-aid agenda
July 2nd, 2009 |
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If Berlusconi sets the tone at next week’s G8, it will be a disaster for a cherished Labour goal
The G8 is less than a week away but already the Italian presidency is seen as having a disastrous impact on aid. Uninterested, disorganised and short is likely to be the summary of the summit by the end of next week: the G8 leaders, according to the latest plans, will have only three hours sitting down together.
While the developing world reels from the economic downturn, Italy has shown no ambition for the aid agenda. It is falling dramatically behind on its own commitments made in 2005 at Gleneagles and is instituting draconian cuts of 56% in its aid budget this year. Italy will end up with the lowest rate of aid – less than 0.1% of GDP – in the G8, despite its reiterations of commitment to the European agreement to reach 0.51% by 2010.
Italy’s lamentable performance is prompting a crisis of identity for the G8. Accusations of summit ceremony with no substance have always dogged the event, but given that it no longer represents all the biggest economies (China is not a member), or the biggest populations (such as China or India), its one last claim to world leadership has been as the world’s biggest aid donor. But even that claim now looks fragile in Italy’s hands. Spain has overtaken Italy in GDP per capita and now has one of the highest aid rates in the EU, handsomely ahead of Italy. The question of whether Silvio Berlusconi has forfeited his right to a place at the top table is likely to hover over events next week.
But the failures of Rome are only one aspect of how to ensure the survival of one of Labour’s most cherished achievements over the last 12 years: pushing increased aid up both the international and domestic agenda. By 2010 Britain is on track to have increased its aid budget to 0.62% of GDP, one of the highest in the EU and not far short of the totemic 0.7% set by the UN in 1970. While many departments are braced for cuts, aid is to increase – and the Tories have promised to abide by the increases. Labour has established a new political consensus on aid domestically, and an international profile on the issue which is widely admired. But can it hold?
That is part of the impetus behind the white paper expected next week from Department of International Development (DfiD). It indicates a growing unease across many parts of government that now is the time to lash the legacy down, to make it as difficult as possible for the Tories to unpick. The aim is to make aid analogous with the NHS or the BBC, a significant part of British identity. That means that a lot more people need to know what DfiD does, and this is what lies behind proposals to rebrand with a logo of UKaid.
It’s all laudable stuff, but difficult. At heart, aid is a moral argument about interconnectedness in a small world, and Labour has doggedly championed that message under the likes of Clare Short, Hilary Benn and, now, Douglas Alexander. The Tories have bought into that, because as one observer put it: “It’s a cheap way to detoxify the brand, aid represents only 1% of government spending.” But the concern is that the Tories might dilute the primacy of poverty reduction – diverting money into Foreign Office objectives, perhaps dismantling Dfid, as John Major and Douglas Hurd suggested recently. So the new white paper will try to buttress the moral argument with an awareness of self-interest: African economies, if strong enough, offer huge potential markets.
With energy draining away at an international level and a critique of aid gathering strength with the likes of economist Dambisa Moyo, it’s a vulnerable moment for the aid agenda. The fear is that achievements are hard won – involving huge effort in mobilising people on to the streets – and can easily fall apart: commitments dropped, and targets missed when everyone thought the job had been largely done.
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‘Don’t embarrass Italy before g8′ – president
June 30th, 2009 |
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• Berlusconi backs truce on ‘controversial’ issues
• PM claims government is ‘most stable in the west’
Italy’s head of state today begged his country’s politicians and journalists to safeguard its international reputation by suspending discussion of controversial issues in the run-up to next week’s summit of the G8 rich nations, which Silvio Berlusconi will chair against a background of sensational allegations about his sex life. “Given the sensitivity of this international event, it would be quite right to call a truce in the controversies between now and the G8,” President Giorgio Napolitano said.
He did not identify which controversies he had in mind, but Berlusconi’s alleged involvement with callgirls and friendship with a teenage would-be actress and model have been at the centre of public attention for more than a month. The prime minister last night endorsed Napolitano’s suggestion.
“We hope the head of state’s invitation is taken up,” he added. Berlusconi swept aside speculation that his government might fall, saying it was “the most stable and secure in the entire west”.
He was speaking at a press conference in Naples aboard the Fantasia, a cruise liner that was to have hosted the summit delegations before the prime minister switched the venue from Sardinia to the earthquake-struck inland city of L’Aquila.
Deploying a welter of statistics, diagrams and artists’ impressions, the prime minister assured the media that his illustrious guests would nevertheless be received in style at a large revenue guard barracks hastily converted for the occasion. He said the site would soon have 121,000 square metres of gardens with 6,850 bushes and extensive lawns.
Picking up on the theme of the danger to Italy’s international standing, the prime minister said: “We shall certainly not make a bad impression.”
Napolitano said he had had a “wide-ranging” conversation with Berlusconi about the G8 summit. But it was unclear if it had taken place before or after he launched his highly unusual appeal for what in effect would be a suspension of normal democratic life in Italy.
Magistrates in the southern city of Bari are questioning about 30 women, some of whom are alleged to have been paid by a local businessman to attend five parties held by Berlusconi. One has said that a paid escort slept with Italy’s married prime minister last November.
The controversy surrounding the alleged callgirls has temporarily obscured an earlier scandal over Berlusconi’s mysterious relationship with an 18-year-old Neapolitan girl who applied for a job on one of his television channels. The prime minister said he would make a statement to parliament about his friendship with the girl, but has never done so.
There was no immediate reaction to Napolitano’s initiative from the leader of Italy’s biggest opposition group, the Democratic party (PD), which appeared to be split on the issue.
The head of the party in the lower house of parliament, Antonello Soro, said the president was “absolutely right”, but added that Berlusconi, with his “statements and continuous accusations”, had been responsible for much of the controversy. A PD backbencher, Marco Beltrandi, said however that he was shocked by the president’s appeal, which would be “unacceptable anywhere”. Antonio Di Pietro, leader of the smaller Italy of Principles party, dismissed the idea that the country’s image could be damaged by further controversy. “The whole world laughs at us,” he said. “We should resolve this cancer that is called the Berlusconi government as soon as possible, even before the G8 [summit].”
G8 summits are a delicate issue for Berlusconi. The last one he hosted, in Genoa in 2001, was the scene of violent clashes between police and protesters in which a demonstrator was shot dead. Several dozen police officers were later put on trial in connection with a bloody attack on unarmed protesters.
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I apologise for Berlusconi
I’m sorry for our prime minister’s predictable reaction to a story about G8 summit preparations, please keep the spotlight on Italy
As a member of the Italian parliament and former magistrate who ensured that many corrupt politicians and businessmen were brought to justice in the 1990s, I wish to apologise to the editor and staff of the Guardian newspaper for the utterly predictable reaction of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and our foreign minister, Franco Frattini.
The Guardian does its best to keep the public informed. In Italy this government is not accustomed to free debate, or to hearing the truth being told. While sections of the article dealing with preparations for the G8 summit may be debatable, the rest of it contains little that can be refuted.
However, there is one classification missing from the list in the article, one published by Freedom House, which puts Italy 73rd place for freedom of the press. The real problem in our country is that information is firmly in the grip of one individual, namely our prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi – which must be one of the worst cases of conflict of interest ever recorded in any country in the western world.
Berlusconi’s control over the media is exercised via his ownership of the largest Italian publishing house, Mondadori, as well as via the country’s six television networks: three private Mediaset channels owned by Berlusconi himself and three channels of the public broadcaster RAI which Berlusconi indirectly controls and influences, with very rare exceptions I might add, through managerial staff appointments.
His virtually total control of the media allows him to maintain a dominant position and provides an endless source of revenue that helps to consolidate his position within the institutions via a wide-ranging system of patronage. In the past, these revenues were made possible by the tacit approval of previous governments that refused to address the issue of obvious conflicts of interest. Currently Berlusconi pays the Italian government a mere 1% of turnover in return for the television broadcasting frequencies conceded to him and now used for Mediaset transmissions. Since the centre-right coalition government came to power, a number of major parastatal companies have diverted their advertising expenditure from the RAI public television networks to the private networks belonging to the prime minister.
In addition to the media issue, there is now also another, namely the scourge of the “unconstitutional” government reforms. The first of these was a law known as the Alfano bill, which was ordered by Silvio Berlusconi himself as his first act after coming to power, which prohibits the prosecution of himself and the incumbents in three other senior government posts.
The provisions of this law mean Berlusconi did not have to appear in a trial in which he was facing charges of bribing a witness. David Mills, his lawyer and former husband of Blair government minister Tessa Jowell, has been sentenced to four years and six months imprisonment for accepting a bribe. On 6 October, the constitutional court is due to issue a ruling regarding the constitutionality of the Alfano bill and, should the court rule that it is indeed unconstitutional, then Berlusconi will be obliged to stand trial for allegedly bribing Mills.
I would like to conclude by appealing to the Guardian and the other foreign press not to allow the spotlight to move away from Italy and to continue to perform the same vitally important task that they have always performed in the past, namely the task of informing the public, a role that most of our media have abdicated from because they are no longer being allowed to do their job.