Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has said he has never paid a woman for sex.
The politician is currently the subject of an investigation under way in southern Italy.
'I have never paid a woman,' Mr Berlusconi said in an interview with a weekly magazine.
'I have never seen the satisfaction that there could be in it without the pleasure of conquest,' he told the celebrity weekly Chi.
Call girl Patrizia D'Addario told the Corriere della Sera newspaper last week that she had gone twice to Mr Berlusconi's Rome residence on the promise of earning €2,000 for each visit.
Investigators in Bari have interviewed Ms D'Addario and three other young women who claim to have been paid to take part in a party at one of Mr Berlusconi's homes.
Asked whether he was aware that Ms D'Addario worked as an elite escort, Mr Berlusconi replied: 'If I suspected someone of such a thing, I would keep her thousands of kilometres away.'
It was Mr Berlusconi's first specific remarks on the probe, having earlier dismissed the scandal as 'rubbish'.
Ms D'Addario denied being party to a 'well paid mission,' in other words that she was paid to make last week's claims. 'I deny that this was the case.'
'If Mr Berlusconi has the slightest proof backing his claims he must present them to legal authorities,' she said.
'If this is not the case, he should not be making such claims,' she added.
The 72-year-old billionaire is involved in a number of scandals, from his links to an aspiring teen model to a messy divorce.
Early this month, Italian authorities seized hundreds of photos that were taken at Mr Berlusconi's Sardinian villa.
Some of the pictures were published in a Spanish paper and showed Mr Berlusconi in his garden alongside topless women and a naked man.
Mr Berlusconi is also under investigation for allegedly misusing his official plane to fly personal guests, including a flamenco dancer and a well-known singer, to his villa.
