Embattled Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said he has never paid a woman for sex, the subject of an embarrassing investigation under way in southern Italy. "I have never paid a woman," Berlusconi said in an interview to appear today.

"I have never seen the satisfaction that there could be in it without the pleasure of conquest," he told the celebrity weekly Chi. The 72-year-old billionaire is embroiled in a host of scandals from his links to an aspiring teen model to a messy divorce.