Post date: Sep 19, 2013 3:41:50 PM
Russian president Vladimir Putin says if former Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi was gay he wouldn't have any problems with the law.
VALDAI, RUSSIA (SEPTEMBER 19, 2013) (RUSSIAN POOL) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday (September 19) that former Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi, a 76-year-old billionaire media magnate and four times prime minister,
would have fewer problems with the law if he was gay.
Putin made the comments at the annual gathering of journalists and Russian experts at the north-western Russian city of Valdai."Berlusconi went on trial just because he lives with women. If he was a homosexual nobody would ever touch him," Putin said to participants of the Valdai forum from stage where he was sitting together with the former Italian prime minister Romano Prodi.
The Russian president's comments made Prodi laugh.
Italy's highest appeals court said in August Berlusconi was the mastermind behind a complex system of tax evasion by his holding company Fininvest.
In addition to the tax fraud case, he is fighting a 7-year jail sentence issued by a Milan court this year for paying for sex with an under-aged prostitute and abusing his office to cover it up.
A Milan court found Berlusconi, the flamboyant media tycoon, guilty of paying for sex with former teenage nightclub dancer Karima El Mahroug, better known under her stage name "Ruby the Heartstealer", during alleged "bunga bunga" sex parties at his palatial home near Milan.
However he will not have to serve any jail time before he has exhausted appeals.
Berlusconi defiantly vowed to stay at the centre of Italian politics on Wednesday (September 18) despite his expected expulsion from parliament over a fraud conviction, and accused leftist judges of plotting against him to pervert democracy.