Silvio Berlusconi, the boastful billionaire media mogul who was Italy's longest-serving premier despite scandals over his sex-fueled parties and allegations of corruption, died Monday, according to his television network. He was 86.
Mediaset announced his death with a smiling photo of the man on its homepage and the headline: “Berlusconi is dead.”
His Forza Italia political party was a coalition partner with current Premier Giorgia Meloni, a far-right leader who came to power last year, although he held no position in the government. As Berlusconi aged, some derided his perpetual tan, hair transplants and live-in girlfriends who were decades younger. For many years, however, Berlusconi seemed untouchable despite the personal scandals.
He stayed at the helm of Forza Italia, the center-right party he created when he entered politics in the 1990s and named for a soccer cheer, “Let's go, Italy.” With no groomed successor in sight, voters started to desert it. In 2013, guests at one of his parties included an underage Moroccan dancer whom prosecutors alleged had sex with Berlusconi in exchange for cash and jewelry. After a trial spiced by lurid details, a Milan court initially convicted Berlusconi of paying for sex with a minor and using his office to try to cover it up. Both denied having sex with each other, and he was eventually acquitted.
Berlusconi saw himself as Italy's savior from what he described as the Communist menace — years after the Berlin Wall fell. From the start of his political career in 1994, he portrayed himself as the target of a judiciary he described as full of leftist sympathizers. He always proclaimed his innocence.
Berlusconi was nicknamed “Papi” — or “Daddy” — by an aspiring model whose 18th birthday bash he attended, also to his wife’s irritation. Later, self-described escort Patrizia D’Addario said she spent the night with him on the evening that Barack Obama was elected U.S. president in 2008. When criticized in 2003 at the European Parliament by a German lawmaker, Berlusconi likened his adversary to a concentration camp guard. Years later, he drew outrage when he compared his family's legal woes to what Jews must have encountered in Nazi Germany.
His first government in 1994 collapsed after eight months when an ally who led an anti-immigrant party yanked support. But aided by an aggressive campaign that included mass mailings of glossy magazines recounting his success story, Berlusconi swept to victory in 2001. An admirer of U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Berlusconi passed reforms that partially liberalized the labor and pension systems, among Europe’s most inflexible. He also was chummy with Putin, who stayed at his Sardinian estate, and he visited the Russian leader, notably going to Crimea after Moscow illegally annexed the peninsula in 2014.
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