Berlusconi alimony payments more than halved to 1.4 million
(ANSA) – Monza, October 22 – An Italian court has cut by more than half the massive monthly alimony payments ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi must make to his estranged wife Veronica Lario, media reports said Tuesday.
A court in Monza has reduced Lario’s monthly alimony to 1.4 million euros from a previous award of three million per month set in December 2012, the daily Corriere della Sera reports.
Economic conditions were cited as a reason for the reduction to the alimony payments initially established by a Milan court.
It is expected that the new alimony package will be legally challenged by Lario, who was married for 22 years to one of Italy’s richest men and a three-time premier of the country.
In April, Berlusconi lost an appeal in a Milan court against the three million euro monthly alimony payments, leading the ex-premier to denounce the “unreal” verdict from “feminist and Communist judges”.
That left him one last appeal to a top court to cut the alimony of Lario, with whom he has three children.
But in the meantime, in July Berlusconi quietly launched a second case against the alimony payments, as well as a formal bid for a full divorce, in the court of Monza, leading to Tuesday’s ruling.
Monza in the province where Lario now lives, in the town of Macherio.
Lario left Berlusconi after he attended the 18th birthday party of an aspiring starlet and friend in Naples in 2009, accusing him of consorting with minors. The couple had been together for 30 years in total.
Following a three-year legal tussle between the separated couple, the courts initially gave Lario 36 million euros a year but awarded Berlusconi sole possession of his luxury villa outside Milan and his vast business empire.
The couple’s marital ups and downs have been well publicized over the years.
A media firestorm lit up in 2007 when Lario demanded a public apology from her “flirtatious” husband in a public letter to the editor of the La Repubblica daily, which published the contents on the front page.
“I am asking for a public apology, given that I haven’t received a private one,” she wrote in the letter.
The pair made up after Berlusconi said sorry and presented her with an expensive birthday present, disguising himself as a dancing sheikh.
When Lario filed for divorce after Berlusconi’s appearance at Neapolitan teen Noemi Letizia’s birthday party, the ex-premier told the gossip magazine Chi that he regretted the end of his “love story”.
Born Miriam Raffaela Bartolini, former actress Lario was Berlusconi’s second wife.
Berlusconi was smitten after seeing her perform topless in a Milan play in 1980.
Berlusconi announced late last year that he intends to wed for the third time, and is engaged to Naples-born Francesca Pascale, a woman almost 50 years his junior.