Berlusconi's Bedroom: Ex Model Claims to Have Secret Tapes

June 19, 2009 — -- The scandal surrounding Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi over his extramarital affairs just got sleazier. Berlusconi, 72, has hit the headlines again, this time with allegations made by a showgirl claiming she and a number of other women were paid by the prime minister to attend his private parties.

Splashed across the front page of the Italian newspaper Corierre Della Sera, 42-year-old Patrizia D'Addario claims she has pictures allegedly showing Berlusconi's bedroom as well as secretly recorded video and audio tapes of their encounters. Some of the material D'Addario filmed allegedly shows a bedroom with a framed photograph of his estranged wife Veronica Lario.

The former model has turned in these tapes and Italian police are now verifying their authenticity. The other women embroiled in this claim have also been interviewed by prosecutors to determine whether they were to attend the prime minister's parties.

Berlusconi's office has dismissed the claims.

It's the latest in a series of allegations surrounding Berlusconi's "friendships" with various women, including most recently, teenaged model Noemi Letizia.

Letizia's name first appeared in the Italian press when Berlusconi's wife sent an open letter to an Italian newspaper criticizing her husband's choice of female candidates for the upcoming European elections as unqualified. She also bitterly complained that he had attended Letizia's 18th birthday party in Naples while he never bothered to attend those of his own children. Lario called her husband "unwell" and implied that his attraction to beautiful younger women was causing him to make bad decisions.

The battle of the Berlusconis played out in the press and Lario asked for a divorce. Initially in interviews conducted by ABC News with Rome residents, most Italians shrugged off the divorce and the titillating details as a private matter. But Berlusconi's original explanation that he went to the party because he happened to be in Naples that evening and had a spare hour or so has been disputed by the Italian press after interviews with people involved.