Silvio Berlusconi: Former Italian prime minister ‘diagnosed with leukaemia’

Berlusconi was admitted to hospital in Milan on Wednesday

Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has been diagnosed with leukaemia, according to media reports.

Mr Berlusconi, 86, had been admitted to Milan’s San Raffaele hospital on Wednesday with heart problems and shortness of breath.

The cancer diagnosis was first reported by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, and Reuters later said this was confirmed by a source close to the matter.

“I spoke this morning with Professor Zangrillo (Berlusconi’s personal doctor) and he told me that Berlusconi spent a quiet night, his condition is stable,” deputy prime minister Antonio Tajani from Mr Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party told state TV station Rai.

The three-time prime minister of Italy has had a series of health problems in recent years, most recently recovering from Covid in 2020.

He has also had a pacemaker for years, underwent heart surgery to replace an aortic valve in 2016 and has overcome prostate cancer.

His Forza Italia party is a key component of prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s conservative coalition.

However, the former PM himself does not have a government role and sits in the Senate, the upper house of the Italian parliament.

In February, a court acquitted Mr Berlusconi over allegations of bribing witnesses in an underage prostitution scandal that had dogged him for more than a decade.

In 2011, the scandal contributed to his downfall as prime minister, marking the end of his fourth government.

He was accused of paying 24 people, mostly young guests at his so-called “bunga bunga” parties, to provide false testimony in a previous trial where he was charged with paying for sex with a 17-year-old Moroccan nightclub dancer Karima El Mahroug, better known by her stage name “Ruby the Heartstealer”.

He was eventually acquitted in the initial case, with an appeals court ruling that while he had paid a teenager for sex, there was no proof he knew she was a minor.

The billionaire media tycoon made his fortune from commercial television.

Since his entry into politics in 1994, Mr Berlusconi's career has been marked by legal battles.

He was temporarily banned from political office after a conviction for tax fraud in 2013.

That ban has long expired and he returned to the Senate in the 2022 national elections.

Additional reporting by agencies