In October, those issues will be examined when a Milan court decides whether Minetti, a dental hygienist by training, should face trial on charges of organizing prostitutes, including an underage woman, for Berlusconi.
The court date will bring back the specter of Berlusconi’s so-called Bunga Bunga bashes, which Minetti herself attended, and promises to remind frustrated Italians that the prime minister, now busy fending off economic disaster, has often diverted his energies to more personal affairs.
In the meantime, Minetti, now a veteran of Italian politics, television, media, the justice system and celebrity, would like to shed the harem madam image.
“It’s not that people know you because you are a famous actress or a famous model; or a famous politician,” said Minetti, who displays in her office a picture of Berlusconi with her bare arm draped over his shoulders. “What I would love to do is try and change this. One of the things that Berlusconi really believes in is that from a big bad thing can come about a big good thing.”
A relationship with benefits
Minetti grew up in the seaside town of Rimini. She put fashion posters on her bedroom wall and danced in her mother’s ballet workshop. Her grandmother suggested that she seek financial stability as a notary public.
“Obviously,” Minetti said. “I didn’t do that.”
Instead she studied dentistry at San Raffaele, a university hospital in Milan. “I’ve always been fascinated by teeth,” she said.
As a student, she met some television producers at a coffee bar under her apartment and landed a breakthrough gig. “We didn’t do nothing, we just sort of stood on a —” she paused to look at her father, Antonio, who is acting as her manager and sat with her jittery publicist and a legislative assistant across the room. “How do you say altalena?”
“Swing,” her father assisted.
Minetti acknowledges that dancing isn’t her strong suit, but executives at Berlusconi’s television company Mediaset saw something in her. In 2009 she danced on a show called Colorado Cafe, for which she wore a provocative schoolgirl outfit.
In December 2009, a mentally ill man wielding a statue of the Milan cathedral attacked Berlusconi and broke his teeth. The prime minister had his smile fixed in San Raffaele, where Minetti studied. She insisted that she never treated the prime minister, saying “I never ever have even looked at the prime minister’s mouth.” Instead she says she met him in the hospital’s dermatology wing, where Berlusconi was visiting for surgery. (“Dermatology and teeth work is very connected,” she explained.)
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