Prosecutors want to search Berlusconi’s offices

Prosecutors are seeking authorization to search Silvio Berlusconi's offices, a day after making public their claims that the Italian prime minister financially supported and slept with a "significant number" of prostitutes.

In the request, part of a prostitution case involving an under-age Moroccan woman, Milan's chief prosecutor, Edmondo Bruti Liberati, said prosecutors are seeking to obtain documents and computer files from one of Berlusconi's offices on the outskirts of Milan. The request was posted on parliament's website Monday after being made Friday.

Prosecutors charge that Berlusconi provided young women who frequented his Milan mansion, and with whom he paid to have sex, with apartments in the city.

Prosecutors had also sought to search the office of a Berlusconi associate, who they believe paid the women on behalf of the scandal-prone 74-year old billionaire prime minister.

Berlusconi is being investigated for allegedly paying for sex with a teenage nightclub dancer and using his office to cover it up.

The two alleged offenses carry sentences totaling 15 years in jail.

Bruti Liberati said prosecutors believed documents filed Jan. 14 in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of parliament, show that members of Berlusconi's entourage gave gifts and cash to many women, including Karima El Mahroug, a Moroccan teenager nicknamed "Ruby."

Prosecutors allege that Mahroug had sexual encounters with Berlusconi in return for gifts and cash payments between February and May 2010, when she was 17 years old.

As a member of the chamber, Berlusconi is shielded by a law that requires a chamber commission to sign off on any request by prosecutors to search members' properties before they are carried out.