“The end of an era”headlined the newspaper Repubblica, after the death of the former premier Silvio Berlusconi, happened in the San Rafael hospital in Milan at 9:30 a.m. local time. The man who “It changed politics in Italy” 86-year-old, as Corriere della Sera described, was hospitalized for a leukemia picture and a few weeks ago he was recovering from severe pneumonia.
The four-time prime minister and current Italian senator was considered by opponents as a controversial political figure, who never lost momentum in his fight for power. From his origins as a construction businessman at the beginning of the 1970s, at the same time that he was the one who renewed modern Italian television with Channel 5, the Milanese went through various jobs from a very young age, among the most curious is that of entertainer. tourist cruise ship and sports journalist.
Berlusconi’s life has played a central role in Italian politics for the past 35 years through the centre-right party, founded in 1994, Forza Italywhich would become the coalition Il Popolo della Liberta . However, his position in political power dates from the late 70s. In 1980, during a search of the mansion of the Grand Master Licio Gelli, found the list of members of the Masonic Lodge Propaganda Due (P2) since 1978, in which the name of the businessman stood out in the document.
The organization, irregularly linked to Italian Freemasonry, was involved in the fraudulent bankruptcy of the Ambrosian bank and a string of financial crimes, which included criminal maneuvers with the Institute for Works of Religion, recognized as the “Vatican Bank”. At that time, the police investigation shook the Christian Democratic government of Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and several of the main figures of Italian politics, also from Argentina, were exposed in the mafia conspiracy. A crime sequence that inspired the filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola for the development of the film “The Godfather Part III”.
In the 1990s, the creation of the media emporium mediaset It was the vehicle that prompted him to start his political career with the creation of Forza Italia, an ideological reference point for the European popular right-wing parties, with which in 1994 he was appointed President of the Council of Ministers. Meanwhile, the opponents, generally of a social democratic tendency, began to publicly denounce alleged conflicts of interest due to their extensive business network, which included, in addition to the television network, the Milan soccer club, the construction company fininvest and the editorial colossus Mondadori.
As it happened with so many politicians, soccer was part of his construction of power. He AC Milan, in which he headed the board of directors since 1986 and for 31 years, garnered 29 national and international titles and served as a launching pad. The powerful image of a successful businessman was complemented by his provocative style. The then called “Cavaliere”an honorary title he received in 1977 and which he had to renounce in 2014, came to be ranked 12th among the most powerful people in the world by Forbes magazine in 2009 and the 25th richest on the planet in the 2005 list of the same publication. .
In 1996, he was investigated by the Sicilian prosecutor’s office for money laundering and for his links to the Cosa Nostra, including alleged semi-annual payments for protection and other businesses. In that case, a lawyer he trusted, Marcello Dell’Utri, was sentenced to nine years for mafia association. One more stain on the leopard that, however, never overshadowed his electoral popularity. Berlusconi was the last prime minister voted for by the Italians at the polls, before the country began a cycle of five prime ministers in almost ten years who were anointed by parliamentary agreements. In total, he reached 3,340 days as premier divided into four periods: 1994-1995; 2001-2005, 2005-2006 and 2008-2011. No other political leader in the history of the Italian Republic was in office for so many days.
Berlusconi’s political career also had its pronounced decline, in addition to being five times a deputy, he was part of the upper house for a brief period until his expulsion in 2013. Sentenced to four years in prison for tax fraud, in the so-called “Mediaset case”on November 27 of that year, he was expelled from the Senate and was deprived of the possibility of running for election until 2019. In May 2018, a Milan court accepted an appeal to annul the ruling, and the trial began again. political path that made him a MEP, three times, since 2019.
Of course, all those scandals were overshadowed by the Ruby affair. The term “Bunga Bunga”, which was released after a series of wiretaps in which Berlusconi spoke of his alleged sexual prowess, popularized police investigations in which the former premier was accused of participating in meetings with underage women and prostitutes. The former president, married and divorced twice, was accused of having paid for having sex with minors in 2010, at his residence in the town of Arcore. Tried for abuse of power and incitement to prostitution of minors, he was sentenced to 7 years in prison, but finally obtained his acquittal in 2015 for the Supreme Court.
Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, has assured that with the death of Silvio Berlsuconi, deceased today, “one of the most influential men in the history of Italy” disappears. “With him, Italy has learned that it should not impose limits, give up. With him we have fought, won and lost many battles and it is also because of him that we will achieve the goals we had set for ourselves”, highlighted the president.
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