Audio excerpts from a purported exchange between Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and a call girl aired on Monday on the website of the left-leaning weekly L’Espresso.
A male voice said to be Berlusconi’s can be heard saying “I’m going to have a shower too. ... So wait for me in the big bed if you finish first.”
A woman’s voice, purportedly that of call girl Patrizia D’Addario, replies: “Which big bed... Putin’s?” in an reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Putin’s,” the male voice says, to which the woman replies: “Oh, how sweet... the one with the curtains.” D’Addario has said Berlusconi, 72, has a four-poster bed that Putin has slept in.
She is at the centre of an investigation — not directly implicating Berlusconi — into an entrepreneur facing corruption charges who allegedly paid call girls to spend the night at Berlusconi’s Rome residence and a villa in Sardinia.
She claims to have recorded conversations with Berlusconi and handed the tape to investigators.