Ranked 179 in the Forbes 2015 annual billionaires list, Silvio Berlusconi remains one of Italy’s most powerful men, and yet has lost the invulnerability that previously characterised him.
A three-time Prime Minister of Italy, Il Cavaliere, as Berlusconi is known in Italy, controls Fininvest, a holding company through which his family manages their interest in Mediaset, Italy’s largest commercial broadcaster, magazine and newspaper publisher Mondadori, and financial services firm Mediolanum. He also owns AC Milan, one of the world’s most successful football teams.
Born in Milan, his father worked at a bank while his mother was a housewife. Early in his career he sang in cruise ships and nightclubs.
In 1961, he graduated with a law degree and went on to found Edilnord, a residential construction and development company in Milan. He poured his earnings into buying television stations, creating a so-called national network of local stations to avoid regulation banning nationwide broadcaster.
Importing American shows such as “Baywatch” and “The Smurfs”, Berlusconi expanded beyond TV to build a national media empire, eventually making the move into politics in 1993 amid a clampdown against corruption that threatened his business.
When he was first elected in 1994, Berlusconi was already a familiar face in Italian life. He was, as they say, ben introdotto — “well-introduced” — in political circles, but disconnected from political practice. His fiefdom was that of flimsily clad girls bouncing around on TV quiz shows, AC Milan football club and the media empire he had built.
But suddenly, “Berlusca” decided politics was for him and in 1993 established his own political party, Forza Italia — Go Italy — named after a chant used by Italian football fans. Berlusconi stood, apparently, for nothing; he was the postmodern politician for the consumer age. But how wrong Italy was to think that Berlusconi stands for nothing. His genius was to get elected on dancing girls and then ensure both that the ancien régime remained intact and that he put himself above the law, which was closing in on him.
The following year he became prime minister, forming a coalition with the right-wing National Alliance and Northern League.
Many hoped his business acumen could help revitalise Italy’s economy. They longed for a break with the corruption and instability which had marred Italian politics for a decade.
But rivalries between the three coalition leaders, coupled with Berlusconi’s indictment for alleged tax fraud by a Milan court, confounded those hopes and led to the collapse of the government just seven months later.
He lost the 1996 election to the left-wing Romano Prodi but by 2001 he was back in power, in coalition once more with his former partners.
Having headed the longest-serving Italian government since the Second World War, he was again defeated by Prodi in 2006.
He returned to office in 2008 at the helm of a revamped party, renamed the PDL.
His support drained away in 2011, as the country’s borrowing costs rocketed at the height of the Eurozone debt crisis, and he resigned after losing his parliamentary majority.
Initially his party supported the technocratic government of Mario Monti and his reform programme.
But in December 2012, his PDL withdrew its backing, forcing an early election.
In February 2013, he showed he had not lost his touch when he closed a huge gap to come within 1 per cent of winning a general election — close enough to play a part in the governing coalition.
But after an uncomfortable period when the PDL backed Enrico Letta’s government, the party split and Berlusconi relaunched it under the old name, Forza Italia.
Legal battles
Berlusconi has frequently complained that he is being victimised by the city’s legal authorities. He has been accused of embezzlement, tax fraud and false accounting, and attempting to bribe a judge, but he has always denied wrongdoing.
In 2009, Berlusconi estimated that over 20 years he had made 2,500 court appearances in 106 trials, at a legal cost of €200 million (Dh822 million).
His government passed reforms shortening the statute of limitations for fraud, but part of a 2010 law granting him and other senior ministers temporary immunity was struck down by the Constitutional Court, which left the decision up to individual trial judges.
Numerous times he has been acquitted, had convictions overturned or seen them expire under the statute of limitations.
In October 2012, however, he was given four years for tax fraud and barred from office. The sentence was reduced to one year under a general amnesty.
In August 2013 his final appeal was turned down by Italy’s highest court which reduced the prison sentence to house arrest or community service owing to Berlusconi’s age.
He chose community service rather than house arrest, which allowed him to lead Forza Italia in the European elections.
In March 2013 he was sentenced to a year in jail, subject to appeal, for involvement in the leaking of a police wiretap to a newspaper run by his brother.
Berlusconi’s political struggles have been accompanied by a string of lascivious reports in the Italian press about his private life. These have culminated in his conviction for paying for sex with an under-age prostitute.
It emerged in October 2010 that Berlusconi had called a police station asking for the release of a 17-year-old girl, Karima “Ruby” El Mahroug. She was being held for theft and was also said to have attended Berlusconi’s so-called “bunga bunga” parties.
In June 2013 he was found guilty of paying her for sex, and of abuse of power. However, in July 2014, an appeals court overturned Berlusconi’s conviction.
In May 2009, his second wife, Veronica Lario, said she was divorcing him after he was photographed at the 18th birthday party of an aspiring model, Noemi Letizia. She also accused him of selecting a “shamelessly trashy” list of candidates for the European parliament.
Berlusconi is paying the equivalent of $1.9 million (Dh6.97 million) a month to her and their three children under a court settlement.
He has always maintained he is “no saint” but firmly denies having ever paid for sex with a woman, saying: “I never understood where the satisfaction is when you’re missing the pleasure of conquest.”
His turn of phrase has always delighted like-thinkers and horrified critics. In one of his most recent examples, he said his family was so persecuted they felt “like the families of Jews... under Hitler’s regime”. The remark drew condemnation from Italian Jews.
If the tycoon appears younger than his age, it is partly because of a hair transplant and plastic surgery.
But in November 2006, after his election defeat, he collapsed at a party rally. He was later fitted with a pacemaker to regulate his heartbeat and said he needed to slow down.
In December 2009, he was assaulted in a street in Milan — hit in the face with a souvenir of Milan cathedral, by a mentally disturbed man. With a bloodied face and broken teeth, he got out of the car into which he had been bundled by security guards to show his defiance.
Compiled from BBC and Guardian.
This column aims to profile personalities who made the news once but have now faded from the spotlight.
