ROME (Reuters) - Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, launching a counterattack before a European election, said an investigation into abuse of office for using state planes to transport friends meant nothing and would be shelved.
Rome prosecutors have opened the investigation following a complaint from the Codacons consumer association over reports that Berlusconi used state aircraft to fly guests to his luxurious sea-front villa on the Mediterranean isle of Sardinia.
"It means nothing. It will be shelved very soon," Berlusconi told a local TV station via phone, embarking on a blitz of media interviews to wrest back the initiative before the weekend poll.
"There is a rule, passed by the prime minister's office, that allows the prime minister, when he uses state planes for reasons of security, to take with him people he feels he needs at no cost," Berlusconi said. He added that he bore all the costs of housing guests, including heads of state, in the villa.
The 72-year-old media tycoon is already mired in a scandal over his relationship with 18-year-old aspiring model Noemi Letizia, which has prompted his wife to ask for a divorce and stirred an outcry from the opposition.
Berlusconi, whose popularity has weathered Italy's worst post-war economic crisis, denies a sexual relationship with Letizia and says it is a private matter.
He blamed a dispute with Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation over pay TV for worsening coverage of the scandal.
In an editorial entitled "The Clown's Mask Slips" on Monday, Murdoch's The Times newspaper accused Berlusconi of womanising and inappropriate behaviour.
"Unfortunately with the episode on VAT for Sky there was a breakdown in relations with the Sky group and with Murdoch's group, which has published a series of very critical articles attacking me," Berlusconi told Canale 5 TV, which he owns.
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Italians have become accustomed to the legal problems of Berlusconi, who has been in and out of power for 15 years, after a series of investigations and court cases against him.
Berlusconi's centre-right People of Freedom party is expected to win the largest share in the weekend vote. The prime minister is aiming for 45 percent, but analysts say his personal problems may drag that down to around 40.
The last scandal erupted after a photojournalist who took pictures of guests at Berlusconi's villa, including Letizia when she was only 17, said he had pictured several people arriving aboard airforce planes, including a well-known Italian musician.
A prosecutor on Saturday granted Berlusconi's request to seize hundreds of Antonello Zappadu's images, taken without his permission from outside the villa using a powerful lens.
Berlusconi, ranked as Italy's third richest man by Forbes magazine, said the pictures showed nothing untoward and were "absolutely publishable."
He said no rules had been broken regarding the use of state planes in what he called a "very petty" furore stirred up by the left-wing opposition.
(Reporting by Daniel Flynn and Francesca Piscioneri in Rome and Marie-Louise Gumuchian in Milan; editing by Ralph Boulton)
