The photographer who wants to expose Silvio's teen parties

His recent pictures of revelry at Berlusconi's villa are just the beginning. Photo-journalist Antonello Zappadu tells Matthew Bell that the Prime Minister is abusing his public position

Antonello Zappadu is everything you would expect of a 54-year-old photo-journalist: driven, unapologetic, and more than happy to make enemies.

He is the photographer who, armed with a long lens camera and a well-chosen vantage point, took pictures of a naked Mirek Topolanek, the former Czech prime minister, in a state of semi-arousal in the company of various scantily clad girls at Silvio Berlusconi's Sardinian villa. Berlusconi successfully blocked the photos being published in Italy, but five of them appeared in the Spanish newspaper El Pais last weekend.

It is a story that seems unlikely to go away, not least because Zappadu is determined not to let it. When Berlusconi stopped the photos, prosecutors confiscated a disc containing 700 images. On Thursday, Zappadu retaliated by revealing he has 5,000 more photos. All were taken either at Berlusconi's Villa Certosa or at the nearby Olbia airport in north east Sardinia, between 2006 and 2009. "Let me say there is nothing compromising," he says, "But I would say the images are politically embarrassing."

One of these was of a "fake wedding" that took place between the Italian PM and a young girl last September. "I have other photos where you can see about 10 girls getting off a helicopter," he told journalists, "If we're talking percentages, I would say around 90 per cent of guests are women – and not seasoned women. It is a sea of young, beautiful girls. I cannot answer why they were there but I can have my suspicions. You can hear laughing, music, partying, but you do not know what is going on."

Since Zappadu's photos were published, an official investigation has begun in Rome into allegations Berlusconi used a state-funded jet to fly girls to the Villa Certosa. Although Berlusconi has consistently shaken off accusations of sleaze, his wife, Veronica Lario, announced last month that she wanted a divorce after photos emerged of Berlusconi at the 18th birthday party of lingerie model Noemi Letizia. "I cannot stay with a man who surrounds himself with minors," she said, breaking a long silence. "He is not well." Berlusconi denies having had a sexual relationship with Letizia.

The fall-out of the photos spreads further than Italian politics. The involvement of the former Czech prime minister is embarrassing for Tory leader David Cameron, as Topolanek's right-wing party, the ODS, is his main ally in forming a new, non-federalist group in the European Parliament.

After the publication of the photos, Topolanek admitted it was him standing naked, but claimed the image had been tampered with, a suggestion that enrages Zappadu. "We photo-reporters have a hard enough time with Berlusconi in power, but Topolanek opens up a serious new front," he told The Independent on Sunday. "Not even Berlusconi's most slavish defender has accused me of inventing things. Now, given the particular and delicate poses of my unaware subject, it would be quite complicated to compare those with specific shapes and size."

Journalism is in Zappadu's blood – his father Mario was a journalist with the state-owned broadcaster RAI. Aged 15, Antonello reported on banditry in Sardinia and by the early Seventies he was working for the Sardinian daily paper L'Unione Sarda. He went on to international reportage, but it is Sardinia that has provided him with his most financially rewarding work: Every summer he is out on the Costa Smeralda, honing in on whichever members of the yacht set are passing through. His number one target, though, is Berlusconi, about whom, like many Italian journalists, Zappadu feels strongly. "Everyone is meant to forget that Villa Certosa is a property of Sr Berlusconi, or rather, of one of his companies," he says. "It is protected as if it was a matter of state security, given that he says he uses it for state occasions. But should that give him a licence to do whatever he likes there? The confusion of what is public and what is private in the Berlusconi age is so widespread that, to millions of voters, it has become virtual sacrilege for someone to suggest, for example, that it is wrong for Italian soldiers to be used not for sentry duty or security but to allow partying."

Zappadu has set himself up as a champion of press freedom, and has vowed to continued exposing Berlusconi's excesses. He is not, however, above taking financial reward for his efforts, having tried to sell his work to Panorama, an Italian news magazine, for €1.5m. It was a strange move, given that Berlusconi owns it. But Zappadu believes he has been intimidated by Berlusconi since. "For two days, I had the carabinieri on my heels," he says. On Thursday, Zappadu told journalists he plans to leak more photos to newspapers outside Italy. In the meantime, he is happy with the effect he has had. "At least, in all this, finally, there is debate in our country addressing the real issues – that is to say, the limits of press freedom. Real freedom, not Berlusconi's version."