Silvio Berlusconi cast a spell over Italy — and nearly led it to financial ruin
Silvio Berlusconi cast a spell over Italy — and nearly led it to financial ruin.
Many Italians admired the media mogul for his wealth, his charm and his brash, boastful style, and they kept returning him to power, making him the country’s longest-serving premier.
Nothing seemed to shake the one-time cruise ship crooner — not his corruption trials or diplomatic gaffes, not accusations that he was wrecking the country, not even the lurid scandals stemming from sex-fueled “bunga bunga” parties with young women at his villas that turned him into a global joke.
Berlusconi — who died Monday at the age of 86 — had a hold on Italian politics that he summed up in 2009: “The majority of Italians in their hearts would like to be like me.”
That affection faded in 2011 when Europe’s debt crisis turned Italy’s economy into a shambles, and many blamed Berlusconi, forcing him from office. Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” rose from the crowd outside the government palazzo where he handed in his resignation to end his third and final term as premier, a leadership tenure spaced out over 17 years.
His Forza Italia political party lost much of its support in recent years but was a coalition partner with current Premier Giorgia Meloni, a far-right leader who came to power in 2022. Berlusconi held no position in the government.
Berlusconi was admitted to the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan on Friday, his second recent hospitalization for treatment of chronic leukemia. A state funeral will be held Wednesday in the city’s Duomo cathedral, according to the Milan Archdiocese.
Once Italy’s richest man, Berlusconi used his television networks and other media holdings to launch his long political career, inspiring both loyalty and loathing.
Supporters saw him as a capable and charismatic statesman who sought to elevate Italy on the world stage. To critics, he was a populist who threatened to undermine democracy by wielding political power as a tool to enrich himself and his businesses.
But there was no arguing he radically changed Italian politics when he entered the public arena in the 1990s, introducing U.S.-inspired campaigns.
For a while, Berlusconi seemed untouchable.
Criminal cases against him were launched but ended in dismissals when statutes of limitations ran out in Italy’s slow-moving justice system, or he was victorious on appeal. Investigations targeted the tycoon’s steamy parties involving young women and minors, or 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.
Ultimately, only one charge would stick — tax fraud, stemming from a film rights deal.
When it was upheld by Italy’s top criminal court in 2013, he was stripped of his Senate seat, and banned from public office for several years in keeping with anti-corruption laws. Even then, he bounced back to become a lawmaker in the European Parliament at age 82 and returned to Italy’s Senate in 2022.
He stayed at the helm of Forza Italia, the center-right party he created when he entered politics and named for a soccer cheer, “Let’s go, Italy.” With no groomed successor in sight, voters started to desert it.
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.
In 2013, guests at one of his parties included an underage Moroccan dancer whom prosecutors alleged had sex with Berlusconi in exchange for cash and jewelry.
