KARIM “RUBY” El Mahroug, the Moroccan nightclub dancer at the centre of the “Rubygate” sex scandal involving former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, told friends that Mr Berlusconi was ready to give her “all the money you want” just as long as she hid “everything” and agreed not to say “anything to anyone”.
Mr Berlusconi is on trial in Milan facing charges of involvement in underage prostitution and abuse of office in relation to Ruby.
Media leaks for months have reported that Ruby had indicated in phone calls that she had come under huge pressure from Mr Berlusconi and his staff not to talk to the media. The former prime minister reportedly became increasingly worried about the accusation that Ruby had been under-age when she attended some of his infamous Bunga Bunga parties in his private residence near Milan.
Yesterday, the web site of Rome daily La Repubblica published the audio files of wiretaps of Ruby in October 2010 (when news of the scandal first broke). Those taps, which had been ordered by Milan investigating magistrates, appear to substantiate much of the media speculation.
In a conversation with an unnamed friend on October 26th, 2010, Ruby says “Silvio” had asked her to pass herself off as mad “to save me”, adding that a lawyer for Mr Berlusconi from Milan came to visit her in Genoa and said: “Ruby, we’ve got to find a solution . . . This is much worse than D’Addario or Letizia [two other sex scandals involving the ex-prime minister], you are under age”.
In a conversation two days later with a former boyfriend, Sergio, she claims she and her lawyer had asked Mr Berlusconi for €5 million, in return for her silence and for her acting mad, adding: “He [Mr Berlusconi] accepted and that’s the way we will go.”
On the same day, Ruby also phones another friend, Antonella, and this time she is more specific, saying: “Silvio called me yesterday . . . ‘I’ll give you as much money as you want,’ he said, ‘I’ll pay you, I’ll cover you in gold, but the important thing is that you hide everything and that you don’t say anything to anyone’.”
When Antonella asks her about the nature of her relationship with Mr Berlusconi, she says she has been friends with him for “over a year now”. She also says that because Mr Berlusconi paid her €47,000 a week and because she is a good-looking young woman, people immediately jumped to the conclusion that she was having sex with him, but “it wasn’t like that”.
Advised by her friend to go to the media to tell her side of the story, she declines, saying that she has to wait until Mr Berlusconi talks to her”.
In several of the conversations, Ruby seems much-amused, even proud that her story has appeared in the national newspapers and that leading TV programmes want to interview her.
More than once, she says Mr Berlusconi is “crazy about me”, adding: “I told you I knew Silvio . . . what’s coming out now is me being Silvio’s lover.”
At a hearing last Friday, Mr Berlusconi once again claimed that his Arcore evenings had been “elegant dinner parties . . . with a touch of the burlesque”.
The trial, which began one year ago, continues next month.