Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's longest-serving prime minister, is dead at 86

Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire media tycoon who weathered multiple sex scandals and corruption charges over his three terms as Italian prime minister, died Monday, Italian media reported. He was 86. Berlusconi was hospitalized in Milan on Friday for treatment of chronic leukemia, one of several health issues that dogged him over the past 25 years.

Berlusconi was Italy's longest-serving head of government, having served as prime minister in 1994-95, from 2001 to 2006, and from 2008 to 2011. His center-right Forza Italia party, which he founded in 1994, was a partner in far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government, and he had been elected to the Senate in September.

In 2013, Berlusconi was barred from politics for six years on a tax fraud conviction — the only conviction of many charges filed against him — but spared prison due to his advanced age. That was also the year he held his most infamous "bunga bunga" party, during which he allegedly had sex with an underage Moroccan dancer he paid with cash and jewelry. His second wife separated from him amid the scandal, but Berlusconi was unrepentant. "I'm no saint," he said, while denying the specific underage sex criminal violation.

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Berlusconi was born in Milan in 1936, the son of a middle-class banker. He sold vacuum cleaners and sang on cruise ships before starting a construction company in his mid-20s. His wealth came from the media empire he built, including television stations, newspapers, and magazines. He also owned the soccer club AC Milan. His business grew while he was in power, and he was not shy about pushing through laws that favored him and his business or killed pending cases against him.

Berlusconi told his American biographer he knew how to make people love him, and "so he did," The Economist reported. "A poll of young Italians conducted in 1993, the year before he first became prime minister, found they loved him more than Jesus. Though he never succeeded in getting a majority of the electorate to vote for him, those who backed him did so with a fervor rare in democratic societies." He was also widely loathed.

"Silvio Berlusconi made history in this country," former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi tweeted. "Many loved him, many hated him. All must recognize that his impact on political life, but also economic, sport and television, has been without precedence."