The country that invented the term paparazzi 50 years ago is reaping the whirlwind as a “drugs and sex” blackmail scandal engulfs Italy’s showbusiness figures, footballers and political elite.

In its latest form it appears that some photographers have realised that they could make more money by suppressing pictures of celebrities than by publishing them.

Fabrizio Corona, who runs a photographic agency, has been arrested for allegedly extorting money in return for compromising pictures. According to leaks from the investigation, his alleged victims range from Francesco Totti, the AS Roma captain, and David Trézéguet, of Juventus, to Barbara Berlusconi, daughter of Silvio Berlusconi, the media tycoon and former Prime Minister.

Alarm and anger spread through the political establishment yesterday after reports that the alleged targets also included Silvio Sircana, the spokesman for Romano Prodi, the Prime Minister, and Rober-to Maroni, a leader of the Northern League and former government minister.

“This is a far cry from the Dolce Vita,” said Rino Barillari, the veteran celebrity photographer known as the “King of the Paparazzi”. “In those days we snapped VIPs, often in embarrassing circumstances, but we published the results. It never occurred to us to demand money not to publish them.”

The director Federico Fellini coined the term Paparazzo as the surname of the photographer in his 1960 film La Dolce Vita, played by Walter Santesso. Marcello Mastroianni was a louche gossip columnist and Anita Ekberg, an aspiring starlet whose pose in the Trevi fountain became an icon of the age.

The decadent world depicted in the film bears some relation to that uncovered by the Corona investigation, which began as a judicial inquiry into allegations that call girls and cocaine were being supplied for Alist celebrity parties in Rome and Milan.

“Nostalgia for the dolce vita era may be a myth, but in a sense they were more innocent times,” said La Repubblica.

The blackmail scandal came to light this week when newspapers published transcripts of phone calls intercepted during an investigation by Henry John Woodcock, an anticorruption prosecutor of Anglo-Italian parentage in Potenza.

Magistrates have questioned several television showgirls who were allegedly blackmailed, including Michelle Hunziker, former wife of Eros Ramazotti, the singer, and Flavia Vento, a TV presenter. According to investigators Totti — who is married — paid €50,000 (£34,000) to suppress photos of him with Ms Vento.

As the scandal reached the political establishment, another tape was leaked in which Massimiliano (Max) Scarfone, a photographer told Mr Corona that he had photographed Mr Sircana talking to a “topless transsexual” from his car. Mr Scarfone said yesterday that he had made this up to impress his “scoop-hungry” boss. “If such photographs exist, they were not taken by me” he told Il Mes-saggero. “I apologise to Mr Sircana for landing him in this mess.”

Mr Sircana was rushed to hospital with an “abdominal complaint” after the allegation was published in the right-wing paper Il Giornale. Mr Prodi expressed “affection and esteem” for his spokesman, describing him as “the victim of an attack unworthy of a serious country”. Mr Berlusconi also condemned “this barbarism”.

Mr Sircana and Mr Maroni said that they had never paid blackmail. Mr Maroni said that he was photographed at a working dinner in a restaurant with a female assistant. After he refused to pay up, the pictures were published in Novella 2000, a gossip magazine.

This week Mr Berlusconi was reported to have paid €20,000 to suppress compromising photographs of his 22-year-old daughter at a Milan nightclub. She said yesterday that she was neither drunk nor passionately kissing someone other than her fiancé, as alleged. She had paid for the pictures herself because they were unflattering.

As the storm grew, dominating news bulletins and chat shows, deputies of Left and Right said that they would unite to push through a law imposing stiff penalties on newspapers that published transcripts of interrogations or intercepted phone calls. In Italy 100,000 phone taps a year are authorised by magistrates.

Mr Corona told prosecutors that he saw nothing illegal in giving celebrities the chance to buy pictures at the same rates he would have sold them for publication.

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