Former Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi, a media tycoon known internationally for bouncing back from a series of sex scandals, corruption allegations and adopting a politically populist style, has died, Italian media reported.
He was 86.
Berlusconi led four Italian governments from 1994 to 2011. He had recently been admitted to a Milan hospital where he spent 45 days this spring being treated for a lung infection and chronic leukemia.
Italian news agency LaPresse first reported his death. Mediaset, a television network Berlusconi owned, announced his death with smiling photos of the man on its homepage and the headline: “Berlusconi is dead.”
Berlusconi was a flamboyant billionaire whose political career at the top of Italian politics was often overshadowed by his personal life. He appeared in court dozens of times to fight charges connected to, among other things, embezzlement, tax fraud and attempted bribery. He led a hedonistic and extravagant lifestyle, owned lavish real state where he hosted decadent parties, routinely boasted of his sexual conquests and unleashed a wave of anger from Italian women for his casual misogyny. In 2013, guests at one of his parties included an under-age 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. He was later acquitted.
Berlusconi made his fortune owning TV stations that helped promote his personal brand. He also owned the AC Milan soccer club. He began his business life selling vacuum cleaners.
He was re-elected a lawmaker last year after almost a decade after he was given a jail sentence and banned from public office following a tax fraud conviction connected to his Mediaset television empire.
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“Silvio Berlusconi made history in this country. Many loved him, many hated him: everyone today must recognize that his impact on political but also economic, sporting and television life was unprecedented,” Matteo Renzi, a former Italian prime minister himself, said in a lengthy tweet.
Among the international leaders who commented on Berlusconi’s death was former prime minister Tony Blair, of Britain. “Silvio Berlusconi was a larger than life figure,” Blair said in a statement. “I know he was controversial for many but for me he was a leader whom I found capable, shrewd and, most important, true to his word.”
Contributing: Associated Press