Silvio Berlusconi has died at the age of 86. Born in Milan on 29 September 1936 in a house at 60 via Volturno in Milan, ironically in front of a PCI headquarters, he was protagonist of the last thirty years of the history of Italy and of the Second Republic: ex premier, ex Cavaliere, founder of Forza Italia, entrepreneur, ex patron of Milan and then of Monza. Many lives in one.
Berlusconi was once again hospitalized in the San Raffaele hospital in Milan where he died this morning at 9.30. Family members have arrived at the facility: in addition to his wife, Marta Fascina, his brother Paolo Berlusconi and his children Marina, Eleonora, Barbara and Pier Silvio Berlusconi are present.
The former Knight suffered from 2021 of chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (LMMC), a pathology made public only in April 2023 following a hospitalization in intensive care for pneumonia caused by the weakening of his immune system. A few days ago his values had reached the alert threshold again, leading him to hospitalization. Unfortunately, today the situation has worsened.
The Berlusconi family
Berlusconi leaves a "wife", the deputy of Forza Italia Martha Fascina married only symbolically in March 2022, and five children: Marina (Chairman of Fininvest and Mondadori and director of Mediaset and Mediobanca), Pier Silvio (director of Fininvest Ad and executive vice president of the Mediaset group and Ad and president of Italian television networks), Barbara (director of Fininvest and CEO of the fourteenth Italian holding company), Eleonora (holds one third of H14) e Luigi (director of Fininvest and Banca Mediolanum, sole director of the holding B Cinque, and chairman of the board of directors of H14, in which he holds a third of the shares together with his older sisters). The first two were born from the first marriage with Carla Elvira Lucia Dall'Oglio, the other three from the troubled marriage with Veronica Lario. She has also been in a long relationship with Francesca Pascale. She also had 17 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. “Five children and many grandchildren make a patriarch. And I feel this”, Berlusconi said in an interview with “Chi”.
Entrepreneur, politician, sportsman: the three faces of Silvio Berlusconi
For 30 years Silvio Berlusconi has been at the center of the Italian scene for his triple face. On the one hand there was theentrepreneur who, also helped by his political role, had created the most powerful Italian media and financial empire out of nothing, as no one before him had ever managed to do in our country, even if relations with his collaborators Marcello Dell'Utri (acquitted in Cassation in the context of the process on the alleged State-Mafia negotiation) and Cesare Previti (convicted of corruption) have always created strong discussions in the Italian scene. On the other there was the politician, four times prime minister between 1994 and 2011 and founder of what for decades was the strongest center-right party in the country. Then there was also Berlusconi sports enthusiast, who in '86 bought the Milan becoming its president. Under his guidance, the AC Milan club won 8 Scudettos and 5 Champions Leagues, for a total of 28 official trophies in 30 years, becoming one of the most famous in Europe. Then the sale - which took place in 2017 - to the Chinese entrepreneur Li Yonghong. Until his death Berlusconi was president of Monza, taken over in 2018 and led to the historic promotion to Serie A.
Silvio Berlusconi, the media entrepreneur
His Broadcaster called him to Cologno Monzese, but before the TV there had already been much more. In his youth Berlusconi did dozens of "odd jobs": bartender, photographer, salesman of electric brooms, singer and entertainer on cruise ships. From 61 he devoted himself tobuilding, founding his first company “Cantieri Riuniti Milanesi Srl”. from the 70s he built some of his most important projects, including the residential districts Milan Two and Milan Three.
At the end of that decade came the leap into communication and TV with the purchase of Telemilan which a few years later it became Channel 5. In the 80s Italia 1 and then Rete 4 were born. In the meantime, in 1978, the former Cavaliere created Fininvest, the holding that controls all the family jewels, including Mediolanum, Mondadori and, since 93, also Mediaset.
From there the jump. Berlusconi became the owner of a media and financial empire that has no equal in Italy, which grew hand in hand with and as a result of his political rise. Forbes, which every year places him in its ranking of billionaires, gives him assets of 6,8 billion euros.
Yet it wasn't all rosy. In 93, shortly before its entry into the field, Fininvest recorded profits of 11 billion old lire, equivalent to about 9 million euros. The net capital amounted to 1,4 billion lire. But above all, the company had 4,38 billion in debt. The situation was resolved only in '96 with the rescue by dthe Mediolanums (of which Fininvest controls 30%). Then the turning point, with the Stock Exchange listings of Mediaset and Mediolanum, thanks to which the debt situation of the Biscione improved considerably. Profits began to increase year after year, until they exploded in the early 2000s, in the years in which the political Berlusconi signed his "contract with the Italians" and gave birth to his second government. How is the situation today? In 2021 Fininvest recorded revenues of 3,8 billion, assets of 8,7 and shareholders' equity of 3 million euros. The profit amounted to 360 million, while the financial debt was one third of the value of the equity. In parallel Mediaset, which has lost 2015% of its turnover since 25, has become MediaForEurope (Mfe) and moved its registered office to the Netherlands.
It should be remembered that in Berlusconi's entrepreneurial life there were not only TV and construction: in 1977 Berlusconi entered the company The newspaper, a newspaper founded by Indro Montanelli, with a 12% stake and then rose to 37,5% two years later and became the reference shareholder. In March 2023 Il Giornale was sold to the Angelucci family. In the 90s, he bought the majority stake in Mondadori, now in the hands of his daughter Marina, to then invest in Einaudi and other publishing houses. Among the other "signings" there are also, of course, Milan and Monza, e Standa, group sold in 1998.
Silvio Berlusconi, the political leader
“Italy is the country I love. Here I have my roots, my hopes, my horizons. Here I learned my business as an entrepreneur from my father and from life. Here I also learned the passion for freedom. I chose to take the field, and to take care of public affairs, because I don't want to live in an illiberal country governed by immature forces, and by men intertwined with a politically and economically bankrupt past". With these words, transmitted by all televisions, on 24 January 1994 Silvio Berlusconi announced his take to the field, giving life to his political career closely linked to the history of the Second Republic.
His political commitment had begun a few months earlier, in November 93, when the former knight announced, surprising all of Italy, his support for Gianfranco Fini's candidacy for mayor of Rome. On the ruins of Tangentopolis, which had left an unprecedented political vacuum, Berlusconi set about building his centre-right party: Come on Italy, merged into Il Popolo della Libertà in 2008 and then re-founded in 2013.
From those historic words a tight electoral campaign came to life which ended on the 27th March 94 with the political elections which sanctioned the victory of Forza Italia, at the time allied with the Northern League and with the Msi-An, and brought Silvio Berlusconi directly to Palazzo Chigi. But the Berlusconi I it was a lightning government: in December of the same year the Northern League led by Umberto Bossi decided to go over to the opposition, also presenting a motion of no confidence. On 22 December 1994, Berlusconi went up to the Quirinale to hand in his resignation to the then President of the Republic Oscar Luigi Scalfaro.
After this first experience Berlusconi was head of three other governments: the Berlusconi II (2001-2005), the longest in the Italian republican history which began with the signing on TV of the famous "Contract with the Italians", the Berlusconi III (2005-2006), e Berlusconi IV, which began in May 2008 and ended in November 2011 in the midst of the great sovereign debt crisis which brought the Italian spread to the historic level of 585 basis points and Italy on the brink of default.
During his long political career, Berlusconi was also a deputy, a senator, an MEP, as well as President of the European Council from July to December 2003. He was repeatedly accused of taking advantage of his political power to favor the rise of his companies and lighten his position in the trial, also launching read ad personam, including the law on international rogatory letters of 2001, the decriminalization of false accounting (2002), the Cirami law (2002), the Schifani award (2003), the Salva Rete 4 decree (2023), the Gasparri law (2004) , the ex Cirielli law on prescription (2005), the Pecorella law (2006) and the Lodo Alfano (2008).
In April 2022, Berlusconi gave another famous speech: “Today's speech is associated with the speech of the descent into the field 28 years ago. Today is a new descent into the field, aware that all of this is indispensable and irreplaceable for Italy's future,” he said. Five months later, following the fall of the Draghi government, Forza Italia joined the government majority led by Giorgia Meloni, together with Fdi and Lega, and the former Knight returned to Palazzo Madama nine years after his forfeiture as senator in 2013.
The bonds of friendship
“I am bound by a true friendship with all the leaders of these countries, with President Mubarak and his family, with President Bouteflika, my age, with the leader of Libya Muammar Gaddafi and Ben Ali, president of Tunisia”, said the then premier Berlusconi during the press conference at the end of the year in 2010. Among his longtime friends also the Russian president Vladimir Putin. Precisely the statements about the latter during the war in Ukraine earned him many accusations at national and international level. "Putin has fallen into a difficult and dramatic situation, he wanted a decent government in Kiev," he said in September 2022 to Porta Porta. And then again in February 2023: “It was enough for him to stop attacking the two autonomous republics of Donbass and this would not have happened. So I judge this gentleman's behavior very, very negatively". That gentleman was not Vladimir Putin, president of the invading state, but Volodymyr Zelensky, president of the invaded Ukraine. “I would never have gone to talk to Zelensky, if I had been the prime minister, because we are witnessing the devastation of his country and the massacre of its soldiers and civilians,” he continued.
Judicial disputes
During his career as a politician and entrepreneur, Silvio Berlusconi was charged in over 30 processes, in which he has been accused of crimes ranging from corruption to complicity in the massacre, from false accounting to extortion, up to contempt of the judicial order and child prostitution. Almost all of them closed with the non-place to proceed for prescription, with the acquittal, with a filing or the acquittal in the investigation phase or preliminary hearing. Except one: the only sentence that became final in 2013 it was 4 years in prison, 3 of which covered by a pardon, for the 7,3 million euro tax fraud committed with the sale of the Mediaset TV rights when he was prime minister. Sentence that forced him to ask for probation to the social services for 10 and a half months, net of the discount for early release, and led to his forfeiture as senator due to the Severino Law: his ineligibility lasted six years.
In March 2014, following his conviction, Berlusconi suspended himself from the position of Cavaliere del Lavoro. The honor had been conferred on him in '77 by the President of the Republic Giovanni Leone for his activity in the construction field.
Among the best known processes are the one on Mediatrade case, il SME/Ariosto case (acquitted with doubtful formula), the statute of limitations in the proceeding with the story of the English lawyer David Mills at the centre. Perhaps the most hateful trials for Silvio Berlusconi were those involving the sex scandals, ie the one for induction to lie in the 'Escort' case of Bari and the ruby case, with its two strands. He came out with a full and definitive acquittal of the charges of child prostitution and extortion and was also exonerated in the Siena and Rome trials in which he was accused of having paid his young witnesses and some of his guests to tell the judges that those who were staged in Arcore they were only elegant dinners and not 'risque' parties. He was also acquitted in Milan for those same accusations, together with Ruby-Karima and a group of girls, for a legal issue that canceled any judgment on the merits and made a crime impossible to commit.
