Nicole Minetti's defense lawyer
told a Milan appeals court Monday that his client was only doing
favours for friends when she accompanied alleged callgirls to
stipulate rental contracts in an apartment house in Via
Olgettina in the outskirts of Milan.
Pasquale Pantano said the former Lombardy regional
councillor "should be acquitted" because "she was not at all the
manager of a condominium" much less favouring prostitution as
claimed by prosecutors.
Minetti, a former dental hygienist of ex-premier Silvio
Berlusconi who was elected for his centre-right Forza Italia
party, is fighting a five-year sentence handed down by a lower
court for favouring prostitution.
Minetti is accused, along with former anchorman Emilio Fede
and talent scout Lele Mora, of organizing and procuring girls
for the media magnate's 'bunga bunga' sex parties at his
residence.
Minetti's lawyer, like a defence counsel of Fede, asked the
judge to declare incompetence at the Milan court and transfer
jurisdiction to Monza, a city north of Milan.
Pantano also asked for the case to be assessed by a panel
to evaluate the constitutionality of the law banning favouring
prostitution due to "the vagueness of the conduct" defined in
the norm.
Pantano said "there is no proof of prostitutional acts,
much less of the presumed payments, and as a consequence not
even the alleged intermediation" that Minetti is accused of.
In a related case, in which Berlusconi was accused of abuse
of office but has been acquitted on appeal, an underage Moroccan
dancer named Ruby in 2010 was handed over to Minetti rather than
to a youth home after Berlusconi phoned a Milan police station
on the teenager's behalf. Ruby was being held on an unrelated
theft charge, and was released to Minetti after Berlusconi said
the Moroccan girl was a niece of Egyptian president Hosni
Mubarak.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
