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Model in Milan prostitution investigation admits sleeping with Berlusconi
The sex scandal engulfing Silvio Berlusconi deepened when, for the first time, one of the women named in a prostitution investigation admitted that she had sex with the prime minister.
Maria Ester Garcia Polanco Photo: REX FEATURES
Maria Ester Garcia Polanco hides her face as she leaves the apartment block. Miss Polanco, pictured modelling (R) said she thought the eviction was illegal Photo: FOTOGRAMMA/REX
By Nick Squires, Rome 12:20PM GMT 22 Jan 2011
Maria Ester Garcia Polanco, 25, denied that she did so in exchange for money. But her admission makes her the first of the so-called “bunga bunga” girls - a group of 14 women whom Milan prosecutors allege had sex with the prime minister - to state publicly that she went to bed with him.
The model and aspiring showgirl, who is originally from the Dominican Republic, said she had sexual relations with the 74-year-old billionaire out of gratitude because he had paid for urgent medical treatment for her five-year-old daughter and helped her find work as a television showgirl, including on a programme called The Hot Chick and the Dork.
In an interview in La Repubblica newspaper, she was asked whether she had ever had sexual relations with Mr Berlusconi and replied: “Yes, but never in exchange for money.” She said he was “generous and kind”. Miss Polanco said she had attended “five or six” parties at Mr Berlusconi’s estate at Arcore, outside Milan, but denied that the soirees degenerated into “orgies”.
Her claim contradicts evidence amassed from hundreds of wire-tapped conversations between the women, Mr Berlusconi and his inner circle, in which witnesses said starlets, actresses and models danced around poles and performed stripteases before being picked for sex with the prime minister.
“I don’t know if the wire taps are true or not, but all that stuff about orgies and naked women, none of it is true,” she said. “They were just normal parties and dinners.” Asked to confirm reports that Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, was at the villa one weekend in April when Mr Berlusconi allegedly hosted one of his now notorious “bunga bunga” parties, she said: “I don’t know, I don’t follow politics.”
Miss Polanco was among a group of women who were allegedly installed in rent-free accommodation by Mr Berlusconi in an apartment complex on the outskirts of Milan. They were served with eviction notices this week after neighbours complained that their involvement in the prostitution probe, which threatens to bring down the government, had “lowered the tone” of the area.
Fresh evidence about the alleged sex parties was also supplied by Nadia Macri, 28, a self-confessed prostitute, who during five hours of questioning by police in Milan on Friday claimed that the prime minister paid €5,000 (£4,250) to have sex with her and Karima El Mahroug, 18, a Moroccan-born erotic dancer known as Ruby the Heart Stealer.
Prosecutors allege that the disco dancer slept with the prime minister when she was 17 and working as a call girl and have charged Mr Berlusconi with having sex with an underage prostitute, an offence that carries a prison sentence of up to three years.
Miss Macri said she saw the teenager dancing topless and drunk around a pole in an underground room at Mr Berlusconi’s villa that was reserved for “bunga bunga” activities. She said the party, on April 24 last year, turned into “an orgy”. “I was with Ruby at the villa and I was witness to sex scenes with the prime minister,” she told police. “Ruby and I were personally paid by Berlusconi €5,000 each.”
