Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi died on Monday at the age of 86. Corriere della Serra and the The Republic.
The media mogul had been admitted to San Raffaele Hospital in Milan since Friday.
This morning his children Marina, Eleonora, Barbara and Pier and his brother Paolo hurried to the hospital, where his wife, Marta Fascina, was already present.
Berlusconi had been admitted to intensive care on April 5 due to pneumonia aggravated by the chronic leukemia he had suffered for several years, and after 12 days he was transferred to a ward. He was discharged 44 days later, but was hospitalized again last Friday.
Berlusconi has been hospitalized several times over the years, once because he needed a ‘pacemaker’ implanted.
The former prime minister, a position he held three times, was also hospitalized due to covid-19 and, in January 2022, to treat a urinary tract infection.
The supposed polemic of Italian politics
Silvio Berlusconi was a controversial figure whose nine years as Italy’s prime minister were marked by allegations of corruption and sex scandals that would culminate in his expulsion from the Senate in 2014.
Nine years later, at the age of 86, the multimillionaire, businessman and conservative Italian politician was back on the Italian political scene as a senator and leader of the party he founded, Força Italia, a member of the right-wing and far-right coalition currently in power – the first The country’s government is led by a far-right woman, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – although she does not hold any government position.
In the meantime, between July 2019 and October 2022, he also passed the European Parliament, of which he was the oldest MEP, as a member of the European People’s Party (PPE, Christian Democrats) group.
The prestigious Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti denounced him in the feature film “The Cayman” (2006), which centered on the difficulties faced by a producer and a screenwriter in arranging the financing of a film about Berlusconi, who even tried to prevent the screening. block, but failed. . .
Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino also made a movie about the magnate in 2018, titled “Loro”. had three children, while throwing parties with women, as well as his attempts to stay in Italian politics.
Born on September 29, 1936, the son of a Milanese bank clerk, Silvio Berlusconi, a huge fan of American singer Nat King Cole, began working as an entertainer on Mediterranean cruise ships, singing and telling jokes, while studying law.
After graduating from the University of Milan, he plunged into business: then began an incredible rise that raised questions about the origin of his fortune, the largest in Italy in ten years and about which he always remained vague.
This year, the American magazine Forbes ranked his and his family’s fortune as the 352nd largest in the world, with a net worth of $ 6.8 billion (about 6.2 billion euros).
It was mainly in the television sector that the creative spirit of this great communicator was manifested, who, from the 1980s, did not hesitate to “sprinkle” his programs with naked women in order to captivate the audience.
The “holding” of the Berlusconi family, Fininvest, includes three television stations, newspapers, Mondadori editions and even until 2017 – the icing on the cake for this football fan – AC Milan, considered one of the most in the world, which he eventually sold to a Chinese group for about 740 million euros, after winning 29 trophies in 31 years, currently president of AC Monza, a club from the Lombardy region.
In 1994, ‘il Cavaliere’ – the youngest knight of the Order of Merit of Labour, which he would voluntarily leave in 2014 – began his political career: in just a few weeks he put the party Forza Italia on the map. feet and won the election, but abandoned by the Allies, his government fell after seven months.
In 2001 he regained power and held it until April 2006 – a record in the history of post-war Italy.
Exhausted in those five years, he was defeated by a narrow margin in the next parliamentary election, but retaliated two years later, taking over the country for a third time in 2008, until November 2011, when he was forced to give up. the reins of a severe financial crisis-hit Italy to economist Mario Monti.
Throughout all these years, Berlusconi always presented himself as a victim of the left-wing judiciary in his various trials for corruption and tax fraud, until a final conviction on August 1, 2013: his sentence of four years in prison for tax fraud in the Mediaset case, three of which suppressed by an amnesty was upheld by the Supreme Court.
Very concerned about his appearance, this man with thin brown hair dyed, to whom a thick base coat gave an eternally tanned look, resorted to cosmetic surgery without any complexes for years.
His supposed predilection for beautiful women, including “luxury escorts,” eventually led to him filing for divorce in 2009 and a lawsuit for underage prostitution and abuse of power with young Moroccan Karima El Mahrug, known as “Ruby Rubacuori” (Ruby steals hearts) and the so-called ‘Bunga-Bunga’ parties, in the scandal that became known as “Rubygate”.
He was hyperactive and slept for a few hours, he had heart problems since the 1990s, and in 2006 he implanted a “pacemaker” in the United States; in 2016 he underwent open heart surgery, in 2019 he returned to the operating room due to a bowel obstruction and in 2020 he was hospitalized several times due to the effects of covid-19.
In 1997 he had already had surgery for a prostate tumor and over the years he was hospitalized several times due to urinary problems; finally, in April 2023, he was diagnosed with leukemia.
Father of five children born of two marriages and a grandfather several times, this eccentric character, companion of a woman 53 years his junior – Marina Fascina, deputy of his party, Força Italia, also elected deputy in the 2022 parliamentary elections -, awakens in his compatriots unconditional admiration or deep-seated hatred.
Music, along with politics and football, was one of his great passions: when he was young, he dreamed of becoming a charming singer and later recorded an album of Neapolitan love songs, in addition to co-authoring AC Milan’s anthems and his party, Força Italia.
His racist jokes and diplomatic blunders also made headlines, with him once comparing a German MP to a Nazi.
His description of former US President Barack Obama as “tanned”, his habit of “flirting” with women in top political positions, and his friendship with the late Libyan dictator Muhammar Gaddafi and, more recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin – especially after Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine on February 24, 2022 – also helped to damage its image.
But Silvio Berlusconi never apologized and always cultivated controversy, even classifying himself as “the best political leader in Europe and the world”, after comparing himself to Jesus Christ and also saying, “Only Napoleon did more than me. But I’m definitely taller.”
Source: DN
