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Silvio Berlusconi with Pope Benedict in 2009. ALESSANDRA TARANTINO/AP/Press Association Images
Buzz Kills

Berlusconi said meetings with Pope and European leaders interfered with partying

More revelations have emerged from damaging recordings of conversations Berlusconi had with a man alleged to have provided him with prostitutes.

MORE REVELATIONS HAVE emerged from taped conversations between Silvio Berlusconi and the man accused of paying women to have sex with the Italian premier.

Eight people are facing charges of supplying Berlusconi with prostitutes in 2008 and 2009. Among them is businessman Giampaolo Tarantini whose taped conversations with Berlusconi have produced a string of revelations that have been splashed all over Italian media this weekend.

Berlusconi is reported to have boasted in one conversation of having “been with eight [girls] in one night“.

Now The Observer reports that in September 2008, Berlusconi told Tarantini that he needed to reduce the amount of women being provided to him since he had a “terrible week” ahead of seeing Pope Benedict, French president Nicolas Sarkozy, German chancellor Angela Merkel and then UK premier Gordon Brown.

The tapes are becoming an increasing embarrassment for Berlusconi who has claimed that the infamous parties were elegant affairs that stretched no further than joke telling and sing-songs.

He has also been defending his alleged escapades, reportedly telling Il Foglio newspaper of the latest revelations: “My private life is not a crime, my lifestyle may or may not please, it is personal, reserved and irreproachable.”

The embattled leader is not directly involved in this latest prosecution but has some direct involvement in four other trials including that he had underage sex with a 17-year-old bellydancer and that he obstructed the course of justice in allegedly bribing the British lawyer David Mills.

Read: Actress hailed for rejecting Berlusconi advances >

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