Silvio Berlusconi dead at 86

Berlusconi was hospitalized in Milan on Friday just three weeks after being released from a previous treatment. He had a history of heart ailments, including a malfunctioning valve that surgeons replaced in 2016, and was hospitalized for a lung infection in 2020 after contracting Covid-19. 

Berlusconi was one of the most influential figures in Italian politics of the last three decades. He built a television empire in the 1980s before deploying his showmanship and talent for catchy sound bites to win three national elections. 

He served more than nine years as prime minister, leading four different cabinets, an unprecedented tenure in a country plagued by revolving-door governments. He also played kingmaker in bringing center-right coalitions to power, even when his party was no longer the dominant force. 

Berlusconi faced a string of judicial proceedings yet faced only one conviction, in a tax fraud case that saw him lose his parliamentary seat, though only temporarily.

Despite his wealth — his fortune was estimated at $7.4 billion as of April 2023, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — Berlusconi cast himself as a man of the people, an outsider challenging a discredited ruling class with a promise of national renewal. 

His style and rhetoric were similar to “the rallies of a military leader, a politician, an athletic coach, but most of all they resembled talks of an American self-help guru,” Alexander Stille wrote in his 2006 biography of Berlusconi, The Sack of Rome.  

Many voters identified with Berlusconi, convinced that his success story would rub off on them. Opponents saw him as simply exploiting his political power to further his corporate interests. 

Written off repeatedly by commentators and political rivals following bruising electoral defeats and scandals in his business and private life, Berlusconi found ways to bounce back again and again. Those who dismissed him as a buffoon because of his countless faux pas — such as referring to US President Barack Obama’s “tan,” and comparing himself to Jesus Christ — underestimated his appeal with voters. 

Il Cavaliere (The Knight), as he was widely known, promised “an Italian miracle.” Instead, he oversaw repeated bouts of recession in one of the weakest euro-zone economies. In his last years in power, he struggled to overcome a scandal over alleged “bunga bunga” sex parties that he described as “elegant dinners.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was an embarrassment for Berlusconi, who had long boasted of his friendship with President Vladimir Putin and welcomed him as a guest at his luxurious villa on Sardinia’s Emerald Coast. 

Berlusconi made headlines in February 2023, when an audio recording emerged in which he praised the Russian leader, said he’d rekindled their friendship through gifts and letters, and blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion. He later issued a statement saying that Italy was clearly siding with the NATO military alliance and the European Union in opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Love Songs

Berlusconi was born on Sept. 29, 1936, in Milan to Luigi Berlusconi, a bank manager, and Rosa Bossi, a secretary. After graduating from law school in 1961, he learned how to charm listeners as a door-to-door salesman and then as a crooner of Frank Sinatra standards and Neapolitan love songs in nightclubs and on cruise ships.

Later he dabbled in real estate, building a residential complex east of Milan in the late 1960s. A decade later, he started Italy’s first private television network. This eventually became Mediaset, the nation’s biggest private broadcaster, offering a mixture of B-movies, American soap operas, game shows and titillation. 

Mediaset evolved into MFE-MediaForEurope NV, with interests in Spanish and German broadcasting. Berlusconi’s family holding company, Fininvest SpA, also has interests in publishing and financial services and is led by his eldest daughter, Marina. Fininvest had revenue of about €3.8 billion ($4.2 billion) in 2021 and more than 15,000 employees, according to the company’s website. 

“Contract With Italians” 

By the early 1990s, Berlusconi was one of Italy’s richest citizens and a household name. He decided to set up a political party, Forza Italia, or “Go Italy,” the chant used to spur on the national soccer team. The choice reflected a passion for the game that had led him to buy historic club AC Milan in 1986. He sold the team over 30 years later to a group of Chinese investors. 

Berlusconi’s media empire relayed his political platform calling for lower taxes, less bureaucracy and a more competitive business environment. Within four months of forming Forza Italia, he was elected prime minister, the first person to assume the role without any prior experience of government or public administration.

His first government collapsed after less than a year when his Northern League ally abandoned him over pension reform. But his theatrics had resonated with Italians. In the 2001 election campaign, he took a cue from former US Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and signed a “Contract with Italians” on national television. 

The five-point plan, including tax cuts, 1.5 million new jobs, increased pension spending and vast public-works projects, helped him to secure one of the biggest majorities since World War II and build a center-right coalition that lasted a full five-year term. 

Startled Queen

While unemployment did fall during Berlusconi’s second term, it didn’t shrink enough to meet the job-creation goal. Income taxes remained high, with a top rate of 43%. His signature public-works proposal — a bridge between Sicily and the mainland — remains a dream. 

After a spell in opposition, the comeback master won another landslide in 2008, but his final term was cut short by a debt crisis and his authority undermined by scandals over his penchant for models and showgirls. 

On the international stage, Berlusconi was notorious for gaffes. On one occasion, he described Obama as “young, handsome, and tanned.” On another he told a German lawmaker he’d make a great Nazi prison guard in a movie. At a summit of the Group of 20 nations in 2009, he startled Britain’s Queen Elizabeth when he shouted out to Obama after the traditional “family photograph.” 

Reflecting his friendship with Putin, Berlusconi backed Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and later wrote an op-ed in Italy’s biggest newspaper, Corriere della Sera, describing a boycott by western leaders of Russian celebrations as a “myopic” decision that signaled a lack of respect. 

Constantly seeking to project optimism, Berlusconi was fond of citing his father’s advice that “you have to have the sun in your pocket.” But his breezy, upbeat style appeared increasingly out of place as Italy tumbled into a debt crisis in late 2011. 

With the government scrambling to avoid an economic meltdown, he was beset by legal challenges over his relationship with Karima El Mahroug, a Moroccan dancer nicknamed Ruby the Heart-Stealer, who as a teenager attended parties at his Milan mansion. Berlusconi brushed off allegations that he had sexual intercourse with a minor, insisted he was still the man of the hour and played down the scale of Italy’s problems. 

“Restaurants are full, it is difficult to reserve a seat on a plane, resorts during holidays are fully booked,” he said at a G20 meeting in Cannes, France. “We really are a strong economy. I can’t see another figure on the Italian scene capable of representing Italy on the international stage. I feel obliged to stay on.”

Four days later, with his parliamentary majority depleted and the country’s bond yields soaring past 7% — a level that had prompted Greece, Portugal and Ireland to seek bailouts — Berlusconi quit. 

From that point onward, his party’s influence declined, eclipsed first by the anti-immigrant League and then by the eurosceptic Brothers of Italy. It was relegated to junior roles in government, most recently in a coalition led by Brothers of Italy founder Giorgia Meloni. 

Probes, Trials

By his own reckoning, Il Cavaliere faced more than 100 probes and trials related to tax fraud, bribery and unlawful sex, among other allegations, and spent more than €300 million in legal fees during his political career.

He repeatedly denied all the charges against him, describing himself as the “most-persecuted man in history,” and dismissing judges and prosecutors as communists or “mentally disturbed.”

After decades of acquittals, a 2013 tax fraud conviction stuck, Berlusconi lost his Senate seat and he was banned from holding public office. True to form, he still pulled off a comeback of sorts in 2022, when he was allowed to stand for office again and re-elected to parliament.

Berlusconi and his first wife, Carla Elvira Dall’Oglio, had two children: Marina Berlusconi and Pier Silvio Berlusconi. Following a divorce, he married Veronica Lario, an actress, with whom he had three children: Barbara Berlusconi, Eleonora Berlusconi and Luigi Berlusconi. That marriage also ended in divorce. 

He lived with his girlfriend, Francesca Pascale, before starting a new relationship with Marta Fascina, a Forza Italia lawmaker who was more than 50 years his junior. In 2022, the pair exchanged rings and held a party in what Berlusconi described as a “symbolic” marriage.