former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has won an appeal against his conviction for paying for sex with an underage prostitute.<\/p>\n
His seven-year prison sentence has now been thrown out by judges in Milan, in the so-called “Ruby” case.<\/p>\n
Last year a court found that he had paid for sex with a 17-year-old nightclub dancer, Karima El-Mahroug, known as “Ruby the Heartstealer”.<\/p>\n
Berlusconi is doing community service after being sentenced for tax fraud.<\/p>\n
That was a separate case involving his business empire Mediaset. Berlusconi, 77, helps out once a week at a home for people with Alzheimer’s disease.<\/p>\n
He began doing that service in May – and so far it is the only final judgment against him, despite various other court cases.<\/p>\n
‘Bunga-bunga’ reports<\/strong><\/p>\n In the Ruby case both Berlusconi and Ms El-Mahroug denied having had sex.<\/p>\n During the trial reports emerged of raunchy “bunga-bunga” parties at his private villa attended by showgirls. Some of the female guests however described them as “elegant dinner parties”.<\/p>\n Berlusconi was also acquitted of a charge that he abused his prime ministerial powers by pressuring the police to free Ms El-Mahroug when she was in custody.<\/p>\n In another separate case he is accused of having bribed a senator.<\/p>\n As a result of the conviction over Mediaset he was banned from holding political office for two years and expelled from the Senate.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has won an appeal against his conviction for paying for sex with an underage prostitute. His seven-year prison sentence has now been thrown out by judges in Milan, in the so-called “Ruby” case. Last year a court found that he had paid for sex with a 17-year-old nightclub dancer, Karima […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":32878,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[468,14,1732],"class_list":["post-32877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-old-fadama","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah","tag-president-faure-gnassingbe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}