Veronica

Veronica Berlusconi, the estranged wife of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is reportedly asking for €3.5 million a month, the equivalent of $5.3 million, as part of a divorce settlement. The Rome daily, il Corriere della Sera, reported last week that according to undisclosed sources, the counter offer of Mr. Berlusconi, Italy's richeswt man, was for €300,000 a month. The paper quoted sources close to the prime minister as having said that he had already given his soon to be ex-wife a lump sum of more than €60 million and had offered to let her keep Villa Belvedere, the mansion outside Milan she has been living in (without her husband) for the last several years .

On November 12, Mrs. Berlusconi's lawyers filed a legal separation request in a Milan court, apparently signalling that an amicable agreement was not in the offing. Veronica Berlusconi. A former actress who met Berlusconi 30 years ago and who married him in 1990 (by which time he had left his former wide and had three children with Veronica), made public her decision to arrive at a total break with her husband last spring, after it became known he had attended the birthday party of an 18 year old Neapolitan girl.

Personally, I do not believe that Berlusconi ever had sexual relations with the girl, the daughter of friends, and Mrs. Berlusconi said she was also angry because he repeatedly missed the birthdays of their children. But he had already been thought to have had affairs with several younger women (but not as young as that one) and subsequently it became known that among the women he invited to parties in his official residence were several prostitutes (although they appear to have been paid by a Bari businessman eager to ingratiate himself with the premier.

But this may turn out to be the least of Mr. B's problems. Rumors have been circulating that along with court cases regarding matters involving his vast media and real estate empire, some magistrates here are looking into his alleged relations with some elements in the mafia. It's hard to tell what is true and what isn't since there are several center-left newspapers here that have made it clear they hope to provoke his downfall, but let's just say this is not a good time for the feisty, filthy rich controversial leader.