Silvio Berlusconi
Silvio Berlusconi was an Italian media tycoon and politician who served as the prime minister of Italy in three governments from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1994 to 2013; a member of the Senate of the Republic from 2022 until his death in 2023, and previously from March to November 2013; and a member of the European Parliament from 2019 to 2022, and previously from 1999 to 2001. At the time of his death in 2023, he had a net worth of US$6.8 billion according to Forbes, making him the 352nd-richest man in the world and the third-wealthiest person in Italy.
Berlusconi rose into the financial elite of Italy in the late 1960s. He was the controlling shareholder of Mediaset and owned the Italian football club AC Milan from 1986 to 2017. He was nicknamed Il Cavaliere for his Order of Merit for Labour; he voluntarily resigned from this order in March 2014. In 2009, Forbes ranked him 12th in the list of the World's Most Powerful People due to his domination of Italian politics throughout more than fifteen years at the head of the centre-right coalition.
Berlusconi was prime minister for nine years in total, making him the longest serving post-war prime minister of Italy, and the third-longest-serving since Italian unification, after Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Giolitti. He was the leader of the centre-right party Forza Italia from 1994 to 2009, and its successor party The People of Freedom from 2009 to 2013. He led the revived Forza Italia from 2013 to 2023. Berlusconi was the senior G8 leader from 2009 until 2011, and he held the record for hosting G8 summits. After serving nearly 19 years as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, the country's lower house, he became a member of the Senate following the 2013 Italian general election.
On 1 August 2013, Berlusconi was convicted of tax fraud by the Supreme Court of Cassation. His four-year prison sentence was confirmed, and he was banned from holding public office for two years. Aged 76, he was exempted from direct imprisonment, and instead served his sentence by doing unpaid community service. Three years of his sentence were automatically pardoned under Italian law; because he had been sentenced to gross imprisonment for more than two years, he was banned from holding legislative office for six years and expelled from the Senate. Berlusconi pledged to stay leader of Forza Italia throughout his custodial sentence and public office ban. After his ban ended, Berlusconi ran for and was elected as an MEP at the 2019 European Parliament election. He returned to the Senate after winning a seat in the 2022 Italian general election, then died the following year from complications of chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, and was given a state funeral.
Berlusconi was known for his populist political style and brash personality. In his long tenure, he was often accused of being an authoritarian leader and a strongman. At the height of his power, Berlusconi was the richest person in Italy, owned three of the main TV channels of the country, and indirectly controlled the national broadcasting company RAI through his own government. He was the owner of Italy's biggest publishing company, several newspapers and magazines, and one of the largest football clubs in Europe. At the time of his death, The Guardian wrote that Berlusconi "gathered himself more power than was ever wielded by one individual in a Western democracy". Berlusconi remained a controversial figure who divided public opinion and political analysts. Supporters emphasised his leadership skills and charismatic power, his fiscal policy based on tax reduction, and his ability to maintain strong and close foreign relations with both the United States and Russia. In general, critics address his performance as a politician and the ethics of his government practices in relation to his business holdings. Issues with the former include accusations of having mismanaged the state budget and of increasing the Italian government debt. The second criticism concerns his vigorous pursuit of his personal interests while in office, including benefitting from his own companies' growth due to policies promoted by his governments, having vast conflicts of interest due to ownership of a media empire, and being blackmailed as a leader because of his turbulent private life.
Early life and family
Berlusconi was born in 1936 in Milan, where he was raised in a middle-class family. His father, Luigi Berlusconi, was a bank employee, and his mother, Rosa Bossi, a housewife. He was the first of three children; he had a sister, Maria Francesca Antonietta, and a brother, Paolo.After completing his secondary school education at a Salesian college, Berlusconi studied law at the University of Milan, graduating with honours in 1961, with a thesis on the legal aspects of advertising. He was not required to serve the standard one-year stint in the Italian army which was compulsory at the time. During his university studies, he played upright bass in a group formed with the now Mediaset Chairman and amateur pianist Fedele Confalonieri and occasionally performed as a cruise ship crooner. In later life, he wrote AC Milan's anthem with the Italian music producer and pop singer Tony Renis and Forza Italia's anthem with the opera director Renato Serio. With the Neapolitan singer Mariano Apicella, he wrote two Neapolitan song albums: Meglio 'na canzone in 2003 and L'ultimo amore in 2006.
In 1965, Berlusconi married Carla Elvira Dall'Oglio, and they had two children: Maria Elvira, better known as Marina, and Pier Silvio. By 1980, Berlusconi had established a relationship with the actress Veronica Lario, with whom he subsequently had three children: Barbara, Eleonora, and Luigi. He was divorced from Dall'Oglio in 1985, and married Lario in 1990. By this time, Berlusconi was a well-known entrepreneur, and his wedding was a notable social event. One of his best men was Bettino Craxi, a former prime minister and leader of the Italian Socialist Party. In May 2009, Lario announced that she was to file for divorce. On 28 December 2012, Berlusconi was ordered to pay Lario $48 million a year in a divorce settlement, but could keep the $100 million house they lived in with their three children.
Business career
Milano Due
Berlusconi's business career began in construction in the 1970s, when he built Milano Due, a development of 4,000 residential apartments east of Milan. The residential centre was built by Edilnord, a Berlusconi-owned company associated with the Fininvest group. Works began on the project in 1970 and was completed in 1979.The profits from this venture provided the seed money for his advertising agency.
TeleMilano
Berlusconi first entered the media world in the 1970s, buying from Giacomo Properzj and Alceo Moretti a small cable television company, TeleMilano, to service units built on his Segrate properties. It began transmitting in September of the following year. TeleMilano was one of the first Italian private television channels and later evolved into Canale 5, the first national private TV station.After buying two further channels, Berlusconi relocated the station to central Milan in 1977 and began broadcasting over the airwaves.
Fininvest
In 1975, Berlusconi founded his first media group, Fininvest. In 1978 he joined the Propaganda Due masonic lodge. In the five years leading up to 1983, he earned some 113 billion Italian lire. The funding sources are still unknown because of a complex system of holding companies, despite investigations conducted by various prosecutors.Fininvest soon expanded into a country-wide network of local TV stations which had similar programming, forming, in effect, a single national network. At the time, laws permitted only the national broadcaster RAI to operate throughout the country, and this was seen as an effort to circumvent the state monopoly. Prior to 1974, Italian television was entirely under state ownership. Despite the landmark 1976 ruling by the Constitutional Court of Italy, which allowed private entities to operate local television stations, the state maintained prohibitions on live broadcasting and private news channels. Berlusconi was the first to successfully bypass these restrictions by distributing simultaneously pre-recorded broadcasts across multiple local stations, effectively creating the impression of a national live television network.
In 1980, Berlusconi founded Italy's first private national network, Canale 5, followed shortly thereafter by Italia 1, which was bought from the Rusconi family in 1982, and Rete 4, which was bought from Mondadori in 1984. He then launched three international sister networks: La Cinq, Tele 5, and Telecinco. La Cinq and Tele 5 ceased operations in 1992 and were later replaced by La Cinquième and DSF, respectively.
Berlusconi created the first and only Italian commercial TV empire. He was assisted by his connections to Bettino Craxi, secretary-general of the Italian Socialist Party and also the prime minister of Italy at that time, whose government passed, on 20 October 1984, an emergency decree legalising the nationwide transmissions made by Berlusconi's television stations. This was in response to judgements on 16 October 1984, in Turin, Pescara, and Rome, enforcing a law that previously restricted nationwide broadcasting to RAI, which had ordered these private networks to cease transmitting.
After political turmoil in 1985, the decree was approved definitively; for some years, Berlusconi's three channels remained in legal limbo and were not allowed to broadcast news and political commentary. They were elevated to the status of full national TV channels in 1990 by the Mammì law, named after Oscar Mammì. In 1987, it bought out home video distributor Domovideo, in a seesaw contest with Vincenzo Romagnoli.
In 1995, Berlusconi sold a portion of his media holdings, first to the German media group Kirch Group and then by public offer. In 1999, Berlusconi expanded his media interests by forming a partnership with Kirch called the Epsilon MediaGroup.
On 9 July 2011, a Milan court ordered Fininvest to pay 560 million euros in damages to Compagnie Industriali Riunite in a long-running legal dispute.
On 5 August 2016, Fininvest announced the signing of a preliminary agreement to sell all of their shares of AC Milan to Sino-Europe Sports Investment Management Changxing Co.Ltd. The deal was scheduled to be finalised by the end of 2016. On 13 April 2017, Berlusconi sold Milan to Rossoneri Sport Investment Lux for a total of €830 million after a 31-year reign.