For the past several months, conservative Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s long list of misbehaving has involved sex scandals over an alleged involvement with an 18-year-old model, gift-giving parties with call girls, spending the night with at least one call girl at his Rome mansion and his divorce.

It took another Italian politician to top Berlusconi. In the spirit of non-partisanship, a leading politician from Italy’s left, Piero Marrazzo, resigned as Governor of Lazio.

This scandal was not about just Marrazzo and a woman, no, that is too Berlusconi. Marrazzo’s is a lot more complicated with a transsexual, police, film and cocaine.

Marrazzo is alleged to have had an encounter with a transsexual prostitute in July. Another transsexual filmed the incident with his cell phone.

The film fell into the hands of four police officers, who in the spirit of trying to add a few euros to their paycheck tried to sell the incident to news outlets. When that failed, they tried to blackmail Marrazzo for $120,000.

Marrazzo refused to pay them, and when the story first broke, he also refused to resign, claiming it was a political plot. However, as the details emerged, he finally relented.

“My condition of extreme suffering renders me not useful to the citizens of Lazio,” Marrazzo wrote on Lazio’s website.

Marrazzo is reportedly heading to a monastery as he attempts to recover from the turmoil of the last weeks.

Although the content of the film remain secret, another, longer video, supposedly includes Marrazzo using cocaine.

Besides charges of extortion against the police officers, they are also being investigated for dealing in cocaine.