Silvio Berlusconi and Veronica Set to Divorce

The Italian prime minister’s wife Veronica said over the weekend she planned to file for divorce, days after publicly criticising Berlusconi’s selection of pretty young women to run in European elections.

La Stampa newspaper quoted the premier on Monday as saying he had ordered his lawyers to take care of the situation and that Veronica’s comments might even warrant a lawsuit. ‘To tell the truth, there may even be conditions to sue for defamation, but it’s best to leave that alone,’ he said.

Silvio Berlusconi and Wife Veronica Lario

Lamenting to the Corriere della Sera daily that his wife had ‘fallen into a media trap’, Berlusconi said salvaging his marriage of 19 years appeared unlikely now. ‘I don’t think so, I don’t know if I want it this time. Veronica should publicly apologise to me,’ Berlusconi said. ‘And I don’t know if that will be enough. It’s the third time that she has pulled off a trick like this during an election campaign. It really is too much.’ Her anger was also fuelled by her 72-year-old husband attending a glamorous blonde’s(Noemi Letizia) 18th birthday party, giving her a diamond-and-gold necklace, having failed to show up for their own three children’s parties.

Noemi Letizia

Italy’s third-richest man, Berlusconi has a fortune estimated at more than £6billion.  Two newspapers, La Republica and La Stampa, quoted Mrs Berlusconi as saying: ‘I am going to ask for a divorce. I want to do the right thing – I cannot stay with a man who surrounds himself with minors.’ She added that she was ‘forced to take this step’. For his part, Berlusconi issued a short statement saying: ‘It’s a personal issue that pains me, that is in the private sphere, and which seems necessary not to speak about.’ The couple’s children are said to have told Veronica that they want her to be happy but that they will not ‘go against their father’. Berlusconi met Veronica in 1980 while she was appearing in a play in Milan called The Magnificent Cuckold – at one point during the performance standing on stage topless. At the time the media tycoon turned politician was still married to his first wife, Carla Elvira Dall Oglio, with whom he has two children Marina and Piersilvio.  His first child with Veronica – Barbara, 24 – was born while he was still married but he eventually divorced Carla in 1985, going on to have two more children with Veronica – Eleonora, 22, and Luigi, 20. For the last few years the two have hardly been seen together with Veronica spending most of her time at a house in Macherio on the outskirts of Milan. The last time she was pictured with her husband was two years ago during a visit by Russian leader Vladimir Putin.   La Repubblica reported that she had spent the weekend with a female lawyer sorting out an ‘amicable agreement’ and quoted her as telling Berlusconi: ‘I want to draw the curtain but I want to do it properly and without any fuss.’ The paper added that the lawyer had told her: ‘Keep calm. You must understand that it will not be easy and you will have to endure heavy attacks. Are you sure about all this?’ Veronica is said to have said she is fully aware of what she was doing after discussing the situation with her three children – her statement last week said that they had been ‘suffering’ because of Berlusconi’s MEP babes idea. Sources said Veronica was ‘livid’ over the fact Berlusconi attended Noemi Letizia’s 18th birthday party and grew even angrier when she read an interview in which Noemi revealed she called him ‘papi’ (daddy). Veronica’s patience had begun to wear thin with Berlusconi in 2007 after he told pretty Mara Carfagna, a former TV showgirl and now MP within his party: ‘If I wasn’t married I would marry you.’ At the same event he told another TV star: ‘I would willingly run away with you,’ provoking-Veronica to demand a public apology, which she received. Five months later he was again in trouble after he was photographed in the grounds of his luxury Sardinian villa Certosa holding hands with a collection of women and in one snap even had one sitting on his knee. Maria Latella, Veronica’s biographer, said: ‘Having known Veronica for 18 years I think what really was the nail in the coffin was the fact that her husband went to an 18-year-old girl’s birthday party and not his own children’s. ‘As she herself said she doesn’t not want to remain married to someone who is spending so much time with minors.’