Silvio Berlusconi, the flamboyant billionaire and former Italian prime minister who once described himself as the “Jesus Christ of politics,” has died at a Milan hospital at the age of 86, his press office confirmed on Monday.
Berlusconi, who had a recent history of health issues, had recently been diagnosed with leukemia, Milan’s San Raffaele Hospital said. He had been admitted to the hospital before with breathing problems, and attended a check-up there on Friday.
The politician, who was long regarded as Italy’s most colorful public figure, was elected prime minister three times and served for a total of nine years, longer than anyone since fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
Affectionately nicknamed “Il Cavaliere” (The Knight), his career was marked by a series of political, financial and personal scandals, many of which landed him in court.
Berlusconi was voted out of parliament in 2013. But never one to give up the fight, he re-emerged in early 2018 as a kind of grandfatherly elder statesman, the kingmaker of a right-wing alliance involving his Forza Italia party.
After the Court of Milan granted him “rehabilitation” later that year, effectively lifting the ban on him re-entering politics that was in place following his 2012 tax fraud conviction, he announced he would run for a seat in the European Parliament.
He was elected in May 2019, at 83 years old, and remained in office as a Member of the European Parliament at the time of his death.
Berlusconi also led his Forza Italia party, which he revived in 2013 after leaving the People of Freedom party, to victory with the center-right coalition with Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini in September 2022, though he did not have a government portfolio.
Beppe Severgnini, a columnist and author of a book on Berlusconi, described the politician as a “protopopulist” whose success had paved the way for leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Britain’s Boris Johnson and former US President Donald Trump.
“Berlusconi was actually less arrogant and less obnoxious than most but nonetheless he started it all,” Severgnini said.
“The legacy of Berlusconi was he could read the weaknesses and temptations of a nation. That’s what he really is a master of. He absolved us of all our sins, we were acquitted even before we committed those sins, and he was not a leader, he was a follower in a way, he followed the ‘pancia’ – the guts of Italy.”
Property developer to political power
Born in Milan in 1936, Berlusconi was first to make his name as a business tycoon, at one point becoming the richest man in Italy.
He gave notice early of his showman side by working as a lounge-room crooner aboard a cruise ship to help attend university, where he studied law.