MILAN – The family of late former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has halted the €2,500 (S$3,600) monthly payments that he had guaranteed to each of 20 female guests at his so-called Bunga Bunga parties, two legal sources said on Friday.

The sources confirmed reports published in Italian newspapers on Friday, adding that the family also sent two of the women a letter telling them they would have to leave housing provided for them by Mr Berlusconi by the end of the year.

Mr Berlusconi died in June at the age of 86. His family declined to comment.

The young women were among 24 defendants who were acquitted together with Mr Berlusconi in February in a trial in which he was accused of paying witnesses to lie in an underage prostitution case that had dogged him for more than a decade.

The media mogul had publicly stated in 2013 that the monthly allowance paid to the women was help for the damage to their reputations they suffered after being implicated in trials resulting from the scandal over his evening parties, which contributed to his downfall as prime minister in 2011. REUTERS