Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi dies aged 86

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a billionaire businessman who created Italy’s largest media company before transforming the political landscape, has died aged 86.

Berlusconi had been suffering from leukaemia “for some time” and had recently developed a lung infection.

He died at the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, according to Italian media.

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He had suffered over the years from heart ailments and prostate cancer and was also taken to hospital after a COVID-19 infection in 2020.

Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party is part of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing coalition, and although he himself did not have a role in government, his death is likely to destabilise Italian politics in the coming months.

Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said Berlusconi’s death leaves a “huge void” because he was a great man.

“I loved him very much. Farewell Silvio,” Crosetto wrote on Twitter.

The Milan-born politician’s career was also riddled with other sex scandals and corruption allegations.

He was convicted of tax fraud a decade ago and banned from holding office for two years, although his four-year prison sentence was exempt.

Among other accusations, Berlusconi was also accused and initially formally convicted of paying 17-year-old Moroccan Karima El Mahroug, also known by the stage name “Ruby the Heart Stealer”, for sexual services between February and May 2010 when she was under the age of 18.

He was eventually found not guilty on appeal but the trial hung over him for years.

Legal woes accompanied Berlusconi throughout his political career and he was convicted in at least seven cases on serious charges, including bribing a senator and paying off judges.

His sex life was often played out in the world’s press, including lurid details of his notorious “bunga bunga” parties.

Although Berlusconi made light of his reputation as a philanderer, his second wife Veronica Lario did not and she asked for a divorce, saying she could not live with a man who “frequented minors”.

She was initially awarded one of the biggest divorce payouts in Italian history – 1.4 million euros ($A2.42 million) a month in maintenance. But like many court rulings that went against him, Berlusconi appealed and the sum was later reduced to zero.

The many scandals took their toll and in 2011 he quit as prime minister as Italy came close to a Greek-style debt crisis. A jeering crowd shouted their delight when his cortege headed to the president’s office to hand in his resignation.

However, as the years progressed Berlusconi’s battered image regained something of its old lustre and he was increasingly seen as an elder statesman who exerted a moderating influence on more extremist forces in his conservative camp.

He never remarried but in 2022, he held a “symbolic” marriage with his partner Marta Fascina, 53 years his junior, who wore a white bridal dress to the unofficial ceremony.

Berlusconi was one of the most extraordinary characters to come out of Italy’s often bizarre political landscape, a flamboyant figure whose off-colour jokes alone would have killed a political career in most European Union countries.

After Barack Obama was elected the first African-American president of the United States, Berlusconi congratulated him for being “tall, handsome, and suntanned”.

But his often clownish personality and repeated plastic surgery hid a keen political mind and an almost uncanny talent for tapping into the fears and concerns of ordinary Italians.

Berlusconi himself had no regrets about his political career, although he clearly felt he was often betrayed.

“All I know is that in both foreign and domestic politics, I never made a single mistake,” he told Chi magazine in 2016. “But when I come to think about it, I cannot recall the name of a single friend in politics.”