Italy's longest-serving postwar prime minister, Berlusconi, who has died aged 86, held the job on three occasions, amassing along the way a fortune ranked by Forbes magazine last year as the country's fourth-biggest.
Skilled in the art of not just weathering scandal but emerging from it with his profile and popularity enhanced, he faced prosecution more than 30 times on charges including embezzlement, false accounting and bribing a judge. Many cases failed to go to trial, sometimes because Berlusconi changed the law under which he had been charged.
Only once was he convicted, for tax fraud, in 2013. That led to a four-year prison term, of which three were pardoned, a year's community service and a six-year bar from legislative office - from which he instantly bounced back, in 2019, as an MEP.
Saying Italy needed a charismatic self-made businessman to make it great again, Berlusconi, who had dabbled in music and sung on cruise ships before building a vast personal fortune as a property developer in Milan and with his Fininvest media and TV empire, founded his conservative, pro-market Forza Italia party and entered politics in late 1993.
Denne historien er fra June 16, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Denne historien er fra June 16, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Finn family murals
The optimism that runs through Finnish artist Tove Jansson's Moomin stories also appears in her public works, now on show in a Helsinki exhibition
I hoped Finland would be a progressive dream.I've had to think again Mike Watson
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I see you
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Rumbled How Ali ran rings around apartheid, 50 years ago
Fifty years ago, in a corner of white South Africa, Muhammad Ali already seemed a miracle-maker.
Trudeau faces 'iceberg revolt'as calls grow for PM to quit
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Lost Maya city revealed through laser mapping
After swapping machetes and binoculars for computer screens and laser mapping, a team of researchers have discovered a lost Maya city containing temple pyramids, enclosed plazas and a reservoir which had been hidden for centuries by the Mexican jungle.
'A civil war' Gangs step up assault on capital
Armed fighters advance into neighbourhoods at the heart of Port-au-Prince as authorities try to restore order
Reality bites in the Himalayan 'kingdom of happiness'
High emigration and youth unemployment levels belie the mountain nation's global reputation for cheeriness
