Silvio Berlusconi passes away: The scandalous career of the ex-Italian PM

The party is now a member of a coalition with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, after elections last September. Despite Meloni’s support for Ukraine, on his 86th birthday, on September 29, Putin is said to have sent Berlusconi best wishes and vodka, and the Italian boasted that he sent back Italian wine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at the NATO Russia summit in the Pratica di Mare Italian Air Force base on the outskirts of Rome, on May 28, 2002. (Marco Merlini/LaPresse via AP, File)

Who was Silvio Berlusconi?

A 2009 profile in The Guardian says that the son of a suburban bank manager from Milan, Berlusconi started out in the property business. The creation of an “entire residential suburb near Milan airport” was one of the early milestones for the eventual billionaire. It added, “How a bank manager’s son raised the money for this grandiose project is one of the great mysteries of his career.”

By exploiting personal friendships, he attempted to set up his own private television channel – breaking the existing monopoly of the state on TV broadcasting in the 1970s. Soon, this would expand into an empire.

Running on a platform of having a businessman reform Italy, Berlusconi became PM in 1994 for the first time. But he soon resigned, following investigations over corruption in his businesses.

According to Reuters, “Under Italian law, a defendant, if convicted, has the right to appeal first to the appeals court, and then to the country’s top court, the Court of Cassation. A sentence becomes enforceable, therefore, only once the appeals process has been exhausted. That takes several years and some alleged crimes are wiped due to the statute of limitations, which dictate how long investigations and trials can last.”

A career full of gaffes and scandals

With his formidable business empire, perpetual tan, frequently unsavoury comments about women and minorities, and his ability to emerge out of all kinds of scandals, he understandably drew comparisons to former US President Donald Trump.

All in all, he faced 35 criminal court cases, but was only convicted once definitively – in a 2012 tax fraud case regarding the sale of movie rights in his business empire. Investigations targeted the tycoon’s so-called “bunga bunga” parties involving young women and minors, but ultimately did not lead to convictions.

The previous year’s conviction was upheld in 2013 by Italy’s top criminal court, but he was spared prison because of his age, then 76, and was ordered to do community service. This also meant a six-year ban from holding political office or running for it. He was next 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 by the likes of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party.

Among his controversial statements was him telling players of his Monza soccer team he would bring “a bus of w***** into the locker room” if they managed to beat a top rival.

In 2010, he was condemned by the Vatican’s official newspaper after he told a joke playing on Jewish stereotypes, about a Jewish person who charges fellow Jews to hide in his basement from the Nazis, without telling them World War Two is over.

In 2006, he said, “I am the Jesus Christ of politics… I am a patient victim, I put up with everyone, I sacrifice myself for everyone.”

He has also said that Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was “benign” and that the West “should be conscious of the superiority of our civilisation.” He said that while the West has a value system “that has given people widespread prosperity in those countries that embrace it, and guarantees respect for human rights and religion… This respect certainly does not exist in the Islamic countries.”

(With Inputs from AP, Reuters)