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.

A call girl, Patrizia D'Addario, told the leading daily Corriere della Sera last week that she had gone twice to Berlusconi's Rome residence on the promise of earning 2,000 euros (USD 2,800) for each visit.

Investigators in Bari have interviewed D'Addario and three other young women who claim to have been paid to take part in a party at one of Berlusconi's homes, Italian media have reported.

"Someone gave a very precise and extremely well paid mission to this Ms D'Addario," Berlusconi charges in the interview, according to excerpts carried by the ANSA news agency.

Asked whether he was aware that D'Addario worked as an elite escort, he replied: "If I suspected someone of such a thing, I would keep her thousands of kilometres away.