Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose career was tarnished by ‘bunga bunga parties’ and tax fraud, has died aged 86.

According to Italian media, he died at the San Raffaele hospital in Milan.

Born September 29, 1936, Mr Berlusconi was prime minister for nine years in total, making him the longest serving post-war Prime Minister of Italy.

A friend of Vladimir Putin, he also was embroiled in several sex scandals during his time in politics.

In October, he boasted of renewing ties with the Kremlin leader – and exchanging gifts of vodka, wine and ‘sweet’ letters.

‘I have reconnected with president Putin,’ Mr Berlusconi had said in a clip obtained by LaPresse news agency.

‘He sent me 20 bottles of vodka and a really sweet letter. I responded with 20 bottles of Lambrusco and a similarly sweet letter.’

Mr Berlusconi was also known for his notorious ‘bunga bunga’ parties.

Magistrates say he paid thousands of euros for sex with Moroccan-born nightclub dancer Karima El Mahroug, alias ‘Ruby the Heart Stealer’, when she was under-age.

A court eventually acquitted him of having sex with a youth, saying he was not to know she was under 18.

The media tycoon repeatedly had denied all the allegations.

His second wife Veronica Lario later asked for a divorce, saying she could not live with a man who ‘frequented minors’.

Voters repeatedly bought into his can-do exuberance and Berlusconi survived a string of diplomatic gaffes and scandals.

Known to have dabbled in cosmetic surgery and hair transplants, the former leader also had compared himself to Donald Trump on several occasions.

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

‘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.’

Mr Berlusconi headed up the centre-right party Forza Italia from 1994 to 2009, and its successor party The People of Freedom from 2009 to 2013. 

He was the third longest-serving Prime Minister since Italian unification, after Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Giolitti.

In April, former three-time premier had suffered from a lung infection amid treatment for chronic leukaemia.

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.

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