Silvio Berlusconi dead at 86

The former prime minister and founder of Forza Italia and Mediaset died at the age of 86 at the San Raffaele in Milan:

According to what is learned, the children and brother rushed to the scene after the medical situation worsened. Three times premier, founder of Forza Italia and of a television empire that had shaped the national imagination for over twenty years.

He was also known as il Cavaliere ^[5] , having received the Order of Merit for Labor in 1977 , which he renounced following a criminal conviction in 2014. ^[6] After starting his entrepreneurial activity in the construction field , in 1975 he set up the financial company Fininvest and in 1993 the multimedia production company Mediaset , in which other companies converge such as Arnoldo Mondadori Editore and Silvio Berlusconi Communications , remaining a symbol of his family.

In October 1993 he entered politics and in January 1994 he founded Forza Italia , a centre -right political party ^[7] [8] in 2008 merged into Il Popolo della Libertà ^[9] and then refounded in 2013 . His policies marked Italian public life from the mid-nineties onwards with a typical attitude that has been defined as Berlusconi , widely supported by his political followers and his voters , also strongly entering mass culture and the imagination collectiveItalian and foreign , but also arousing a harsh anti-Berlusconism on the part of opponents, who have repeatedly underlined his conflict of interest , accusing him of enactment of ad personam laws .

Elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1994 , he was confirmed in the following four legislatures, while in 2013 he was elected senator for the first time . He obtained four offices as Prime Minister : the first in the XII legislature (1994-1995), two consecutive ones in the XIV (2001-2005 and 2005-2006) and, finally, in the XVI (2008-2011). With a total of 3339 days, he is the politician who remained in office the longest in the role of prime minister of republican Italy , surpassed in previous eras only by Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Giolitti; moreover, he has presided over the two most lasting governments since the proclamation of the Republic. ^[10]

According to the American magazine Forbes , with personal assets estimated at 7.3 billion US dollars (about 6 billion euros ), Berlusconi is, as of 2021, the sixth richest man in Italy and the 318th richest in the world. ^[11] In 2009 Forbes ranked him 12th in its list of the most powerful people in the world for his role in Italian politics. ^[12]

He has been a defendant in over twenty court cases . In 2013 he was definitively sentenced to four years’ imprisonment and banned from holding public office for two years for tax fraud ^[13] , thus forfeiting his position as senator and ceasing to be a parliamentarian after almost twenty years of uninterrupted presence in the two chambers ^[14] , from April 1994 to November 2013.

Once again a candidate in 2018, he was elected MEP in the 2019 European elections . ^[15]

In the general elections of 25 September 2022 he won in the single-member constituency of Monza, returning to the Senate after a nine-year absence.

#mortoberlusconi #silvioberlusconi