ROME (Reuters) – Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Friday acknowledged he “sometimes is a sinner” but accused magistrates who want him to stand trial over a sex scandal of using Soviet-style spying to oust him in a political coup.

The embattled prime minister used an interview in Il Foglio, an influential opinion daily, to raise the stakes in his war of nerves with Milan magistrates ahead of a judge's decision next week on whether he should stand trial on charges of paying for sex with a minor and later abusing his power to help her.
“I, sometimes, like everyone, am a sinner but the type of moralistic justice being waged against me is ... simply scandalous,” he said in the interview with Il Foglio's editor Giuliano Ferrara, a former Berlusconi minister.
Prosecutors accuse the prime minister of paying for sex with a nightclub dancer when she was under 18, which is against the law in Italy. They also accuse him of abusing the powers of his office by pressuring police to have her released from custody over separate theft allegations.