The businessman, leader of Forza Italia and three times Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi (1936-2023)has died at the age of 86 in Milan, his hometown. sick with leukemia, Berlusconi had been admitted to the Milan hospital for several days. He had already gone to the hospital last April for pulmonary and cardiovascular problems, on that occasion in the intensive care unit of the San Raffaele hospital in Milan.

Despite his age, Berlusconi’s forces had not wavered and he was still active in politics. We had seen him just a few months earlier for the general election won by Giorgia Meloniin September 2022: Silvio Berlusconi appeared, already 85 years old, in Piazza del Popolo in Rome, supported by Meloni, then a candidate for the Government of Italy, and Matteo Salvini, also a candidate and third leg of the far-right coalition.

Three days later, this block won the elections in Italy. Berlusconi entered as a senator on October 13, 2022, thus sealing his return to the institutions since his disqualification, in 2013, for his conviction for prostitution of minors and abuse of authority, a conviction for which he was acquitted just a year later.

Prime minister three times, he had a record tenure in office in seven decades. However, more than because of his political legacy, will be remembered for the scandals that he has starred in and for his macho and controversial statements. Also because of his media power, since he has owned several television channels and newspaper headlines.

In 2007 he announced the dissolution of his historic Forza Italia party and the birth of the People of Freedom coalition, but in 2013 he re-founded Forza Italia and has chaired it ever since.

From scandal to scandal

Besides of ‘Ruby’ casefor which he was convicted -and later acquitted-, some photos published by the newspaper The country in 2009 they caused a real tsunami. The photos showed the orgies that he organized in Villa Certosa, his mansion in Sardinia. At that time he was in charge of the country and, although it did not cost him his job, he did precipitate the divorce with his second wife, Verónica Lario.

She was the one who accompanied him in many of his meetings with Vladimir Putin. Berlusconi was the only world leader who visited Crimea when Russia annexed itillegally. But it is that Berlusconi, until his last days, boasted of the great friendship that united them: “I am one of his best friends,” he said on one occasion. In the midst of the Ukrainian war, the Italian came to boast of having received gifts from the Russian president for his birthday.

A questioned friendship… but not the only one, because, according to Berlusconi, among his intimates there was also the Libyan dictator Muadar Gaddafi.

Silvio Berlusconi was also president of Milan and of a media group, which meant that, during his years at the helm of the country, will dominate almost all the Italian media, the same ones that he used at will. But if Berlusconi was not missing something, it was self-esteem, immeasurable self-esteem and a controversial sense of humor. Whether his jokes were funny or not, of which we leave some samples in the video.