Former head of the Italian government Silvio Berlusconi, on October 26, 2022 in the Senate in Rome (AFP/Archives/Alberto PIZZOLI)
Former Italian head of government Silvio Berlusconi, sulphurous billionaire whose legal disputes and sexual escapades made headlines, died at the age of 86.
Treated at San Raffaele Hospital in Milan for leukemia, he entered there on Friday after having already made multiple stays there. According to Italian media, he had recently been unresponsive to cancer treatment.
The journey of this eternal ghost, whose political death was wrongly announced many times and still elected senator in 2022, merges with the Italian history of the last 30 years.
He was one of the richest men on the peninsula, with a fortune estimated in early April by Forbes at 6.4 billion euros.
-Loved or hated-
Silvio Berlusconi during a demonstration of support in front of his residence in Rome, after a court conviction, on August 4, 2013 (AFP/Archives/Gabriel BOUYS, -)
Loved or hated, the assumed amateur of women much younger than him, including call girls, had found himself entangled in a myriad of lawsuits related to his infamous and sulphurous “Bunga Bunga” evenings.
Abroad, Berlusconi, accustomed to promising everything and its opposite, is best known for the string of scandals in which he was involved, his blunders that have become legendary, his repeated trials and his diplomatic stunts.
A cumbersome ally of the head of the far-right government, Giorgia Meloni, he embarrassed her several times with his Russophile statements after the invasion of Ukraine. A personal friend of Vladimir Putin, whom he received in his mega-villa in Sardinia, he repeatedly blamed kyiv for the conflict.
While he remained popular with some Italians, his party Forza Italia, an election winning machine he founded in 1994, followed his slow decline, dropping from almost 30% of the vote in the 2001 legislative elections to 8% in 2022.
Silvio Berlusconi (c) receives help to move during the vote for the presidency of the Senate, on October 13, 2022 in Rome (AFP/Archives/Andreas SOLARO)
After beginning his ascent in Milan (north) in the construction industry, the entrepreneur endowed with an unfailing patter had successfully launched himself into television, inventing the glitter TV of the 1980s which would make his fortune, allowing him between others to invest in football clubs, first AC Milan then AC Monza.
On the scandal side, Mr. Berlusconi still had to answer charges in the so-called “Rubygate” trial, named after a minor invited to the “Bunga Bunga” evenings and first falsely presented as a niece of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Berlusconi, acquitted for prostitution of a minor, was still on trial for tampering with a witness in a part of this case.
The octogenarian, whose last partner Marta Fascina was 53 years his junior, caused a scandal again in December 2022 when he promised his Monza players to bring “in the locker room” a “bus of whores” in case of victoire.
Over the years, the carnivorous smile of the “caiman”, one of his many nicknames, had however frozen on his lifted face with makeup “thick as the floor”, a cruel expression chiselled by an editorialist.
Born on September 29, 1936, Berlusconi, the son of a Milanese bank employee, began working as an animator on cruise ships, where he sang and told funny stories.
Armed with a law degree, he launched into business, beginning an irresistible rise that raised questions about the origin of his fortune, about which he had always remained unclear.
– “Il Cavaliere” –
But it is above all in the television sector that his creative genius as a great communicator expresses himself, who sprinkles his programs with naked women to please the general public.
The Berlusconi family’s holding company, Fininvest, has three television channels, newspapers, Mondadori editions and many other holdings.
Football fan Silvio Berlusconi chaired AC Milan for 31 years, which won the Champions League five times in his era, before selling in April 2017 to Chinese investors.
In 1994, he created Forza Italia, and following a blitz relayed by his media empire, he became head of government before being let go by his allies seven months later.
He returned to power in 2001 for five years, a post-war record. Beaten by a hair in 2006, he took his revenge two years later, taking control for the third time. But in November 2011, he had to give way under the boos of the reins of an Italy in the grip of a serious financial crisis.
Still without a political heir, he resurfaced in 2013 on the political scene by winning nearly a third of the votes in the legislative elections.
A few months later, the long litany of his legal setbacks culminated in his first final conviction for tax evasion: one year in prison — carried out in the form of community service in a home for the elderly — six years ineligibility and expulsion from the Senate.
He must then renounce the title of “knight of the order of labor” which had earned him the name “Il Cavaliere”.
Father of five children from two marriages, he was a grandfather several times.
© 2023 AFP
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