Silvio Berlusconi ordered to pay ex-wife $48m a year
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is seen while a portrait of his wife, Veronica Lario, is projected in the background during the recording of ‘Porta a Porta,’ on an Italian channel on May 5, 2009, in Rome.
Silvio Berlusconi has been ordered to pay his second wife $48 million a year as part of a massive divorce settlement, according to Italian media.
The billionaire former prime minister had offered ex-wife Veronica Lario "just" €3.6 million ($4.7 million) per year, the Guardian said, citing a report in Italy's Corriere della Sera.
Lario, who left Berlusconi in 2009 after 19 years of marriage, had reportedly asked for €43 million (around $57 million) annually.
Instead, a judge awarded her €36 million a year. That's the equivalent of just under $4 million a month, or $132,000 a day.
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The money will allow Lario to "live in the manner that she was accustomed to during her marriage," said the ruling, which according to Sky News was delivered in Milan just before Christmas.
Berlusconi will at least be allowed to keep the couple's $100-million villa in Macherio, northern Italy, the BBC reported.
Not that the settlement, the result of a two-year legal battle, will put him too far out of pocket: Forbes estimates the media tycoon to be worth a cool $5.9 billion.
Berlusconi recently announced that he would run for a fourth term as prime minister, despite a conviction for tax evasion and an ongoing trial for allegedly hiring an underage prostitute at one or more of his infamous "bunga bunga" parties.
Incidentally, he claims he only threw the parties because he was lonely after Lario, a former actress and mother to three of his children, walked out on him. (She objected to pictures of him attending the 18th birthday party of an "aspiring TV showgirl," according to the Guardian.)
Berlusconi, 76, is now engaged to 27-year-old Francesca Pascale.