MILAN—Silvio Berlusconi, the boastful billionaire media mogul who was Italy’s longest-serving premier despite allegations of corruption, died Monday, according to his television network. He was 86.
Mediaset announced his death with a smiling photo of the man on its homepage and the headline: “Berlusconi is dead.”
Berlusconi was admitted to the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan on Friday, his second hospitalization in months for treatment of chronic leukemia. He also suffered over the years from heart ailments, prostate cancer, and was hospitalized for COVID-19 in 2020.
Berlusconi used his television networks and immense wealth to launch his long political career.
To admirers, the three-time premier was a capable and charismatic statesman who sought to elevate Italy on the world stage.
His Forza Italia political party was a coalition partner with current Premier Giorgia Meloni, although he held no position in the government.
Meloni remembered Berlusconi as “above all as a fighter.”
“He was a man who had never been afraid to defend his beliefs. And it was exactly that courage and determination that made him one of the most influential men in the history of Italy,” Meloni said on Italian TV.
Former Premier Matteo Renzi recalled Berlusconi’s divisive legacy on Twitter. “Silvio Berlusconi made history in this country. Many loved him, many hated him. All must recognize that his impact on political life, but also economics, sports, and television, has been without precedence.”
Criminal cases were launched but ended in dismissals when statutes of limitations ran out, or he was victorious on appeal. Investigations targeted his businesses, which included the soccer team AC Milan, the country’s three biggest private TV networks, magazines, and a daily newspaper, and advertising and film companies.
Only one led to a conviction—a tax fraud case stemming from a sale of movie rights in his business empire. The conviction was upheld in 2013 by Italy’s top criminal court, but he was spared prison because of his age, 76, and was ordered to do community service by assisting Alzheimer’s patients.
He still was stripped of his Senate seat and banned from running or holding public office for six years, under anti-corruption laws.
He stayed at the helm of Forza Italia, the center-right party he created when he entered politics in the 1990s and named for a soccer cheer, “Let’s go, Italy.” With no groomed successor in sight, voters started to desert it.
He eventually held office again—elected to the European Parliament at age 82 and then last year to the Italian Senate.
Berlusconi’s party was eclipsed as the dominant force on Italy’s political right: first by the League, led by Matteo Salvini, then by Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party. Following elections in 2022, Meloni formed a governing coalition with their help.
Berlusconi lost his standing as Italy’s richest man, although his sprawling media holdings and luxury real estate still left him a billionaire several times over.
His second term, from 2001–06, was perhaps his golden era, when he became Italy’s longest-serving head of government and boosted its global profile through his friendship with U.S. President George W. Bush. Bucking widespread sentiment at home and in Europe, Berlusconi backed the U.S.–led war in Iraq.
As a businessman who knew the power of images, Berlusconi introduced U.S.–style political campaigns—with big party conventions and slick advertising—that broke with the gray world of Italian politics, in which voters essentially chose parties and not candidates. His rivals had to adapt.
Berlusconi saw himself as Italy’s savior from what he described as the Communist menace—years after the Berlin Wall fell. From the start of his political career in 1994, he portrayed himself as the target of a judiciary he described as full of leftist sympathizers. He always proclaimed his innocence.
When the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement gained strength, Berlusconi branded it as a menace worse than Communism.
Like millions of Italians, he had a passion for soccer, and often was in the stands at AC Milan.
He stirred anger after Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States by claiming Western civilization was superior to Islam.
When criticized in 2003 at the European Parliament by a German lawmaker, Berlusconi likened his adversary to a concentration camp guard. Years later, he drew outrage when he compared his family’s legal woes to what Jews must have encountered in Nazi Germany.
But his astronomical wealth came from the media. In the late 1970s and 1980s, he circumvented Italy’s state TV monopoly RAI by creating a de facto network in which local stations all showed the same programming. RAI and Mediaset accounted for about 90 percent of the national market in 2006.
When the “Clean Hands” corruption scandals of the 1990s decimated the political establishment that had dominated postwar Italy, Berlusconi filled the void, founding Forza Italia in 1994.
His first government in 1994 collapsed after eight months. But he swept to victory in 2001.
Shuffling his Cabinet occasionally, he stayed in power for five years, setting a record for government longevity in Italy. It wasn’t easy.
A Group of Eight summit he hosted in Genoa in 2001 was marred by anti-globalization demonstrations and the death of a protester shot by a police officer. Berlusconi faced fierce domestic opposition and alienated some allies by sending 3,000 troops to Iraq after the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003. For a time, Italy was the third-largest contingent in the U.S. coalition.
At home, he constantly faced accusations of sponsoring laws aimed at protecting himself or his businesses, but he insisted he always acted in the interest of all Italians.
An admirer of U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Berlusconi passed reforms that partially liberalized the labor and pension systems, among Europe’s most inflexible.
In 2006, as Italy’s economy mired in zero growth and its budget deficit rising, Berlusconi narrowly lost the general election to center-left leader Romano Prodi, who had been president of the European Union Commission.
In 2008, he bounced back for what would be his final term as premier. It ended abruptly in 2011, when financial markets lost faith in his ability to keep Italy from succumbing to the eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis. To the relief of economic powerhouse Germany, Berlusconi reluctantly stepped down.
Health concerns dogged him over the years. He underwent surgery for prostate cancer in 1997. In November 2006, he fainted during a speech, and the next month flew to the U.S., where he received a pacemaker at the Cleveland Clinic. He underwent more heart surgery in 2016.
Berlusconi was first married in 1965 to Carla Dall’Oglio, and their two children, Marina and Piersilvio, were groomed to hold top positions in his business empire. He married his second wife, Veronica Lario, in 1990, and they had three children, Barbara, Eleonora and Luigi.
