(Rome) The media magnate and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who died on June 12 at the age of 86, bequeathed 100 million euros to his last companion Marta Fascina, aged 33, according to his will made public Thursday.
Marta Fascina, whom Berlusconi called “my wife” even though they were not married, is also a member of the Forza Italia party founded by the billionaire. Loved or hated, this assumed amateur of women much younger than him, including escorts, has been involved in a myriad of lawsuits related to sulphurous and controversial receptions.
His last companion benefited from an important legacy, but all in all modest compared to the heritage of Silvio Berlusconi, estimated by Forbes to 6.4 billion euros and most of which will go to his five children from two marriages, to whom the will was read on Wednesday and the content of which was made public by the Italian agency ANSA.
The provisions concerning his multiple real estate properties or his yachts were not immediately known.
Born from the media magnate’s first marriage to Carla Dall’Oglio, Marina and Pier Silvio Berlusconi will together have a 53% share in the family holding company Fininvest, a financial source told AFP after the opening of his will. The other three children, Luigi, Eleonora and Barbara, from the second marriage with ex-actress Veronica Lario, will together control the remaining 47%.
Mr. Berlusconi had made these arrangements for Fininvest in 2006 just before being hospitalized in Milan.
The family holding company controls a myriad of companies, including the television group MediaForEurope (formerly Mediaset), headed by Pier Silvio Berlusconi, the Mondadori editions, chaired by Marina Berlusconi, and the Mediolanum bank.
The net profit of the family holding fell by 44% to 200.2 million euros last year while its turnover remained almost stable at 3.82 billion euros.
The will of Berlusconi, who dominated Italian political life for decades, was accompanied by a handwritten note intended for his children: “Thank you, so much love for you all, your daddy”.
Mr. Berlusconi, whose origins of fortune remain shrouded in mystery, also leaves 100 million to his brother Paolo, as well as 30 million euros to his sulphurous friend and partner Marcello Dell’Utri, co-founder of Forza Italia, who served time in prison in the 2010s for acting as an intermediary between Berlusconi and Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia, in the 1970s.
The provisions concerning Marta Fascina and Mr. Dell’Utri, written in black ink and contained in an unsealed envelope, date from January 2022 and are justified as follows by their author: “For the affection I have shown them and that that they brought to me”.