Berlusconi, De Benedetti’s obituary: “Indomitable fighter” – Corriere.it

And finally arrived too the honor of arms by the enemy of a lifetime: Heartfelt condolences to an indomitable fighter recites the lapidary obituary for Silvio Berlusconi which appears on Courier of today. And then the signature you don’t expect: Charles DeBenedetti. He too is among the many who wanted to honor and remember the figure of the Knight who died on Monday with an obituary.

The Engineer against the Knight, the Cir of the former owner of Olivetti against the Fininvest of the man from Arcore. And then again the character loved by the chic salons of the left against the parvenu with overly flamboyant manners. The duel between De Benedeti and Berlusconi he occupied the political-financial chronicles for over twenty years. Vitriolic words had also flown in recent times (Berlusconi did business with Putin De Benedetti’s words after the outbreak of war), a sign of a rivalry that time had not helped to dampen.

At least death has helped to re-emerge a respect that – who knows – perhaps always existed. The present-arm comes from Lugano: Carlo De Benedetti extends his heartfelt condolences to the family of Silvio Berlusconi, indomitable fighter the text of the obituary that seems to close a duel that exploded in the 80s.

The War of Segrate the conflict that saw the Knight and the Engineer opposed on the public scene but above all in the court was renamed. It’s about the control of the Mondadori publishing house which at the end of the 1980s was in the hands of three subjects: the Formenton family (heir of the founder Arnoldo Mondadori), De Benedetti’s Cir and Berlusconi, who in the meantime acquired Retequattro. Formenton first reaches an agreement to sell the engineer, then he changes his mind and sells his shares to Fininvest.

An arbitration award intervenes to settle the dispute (Mondadori award, to be precise) that on 20 June 1990 proves De Benedetti right. But the Court of Appeal of Rome overturns the verdict returning the publishing house of Segrate to BerlusconiA trial for corruption of judges also starts from which Berlusconi leaves by prescription but which drags on at the expense of the other defendants (including Fininvest’s lawyer Cesare Previti). In 2007, the Cassation confirmed that the sentence in favor of Berlusconi on Mondadori was the result of corruption and in 2013 he condemned the group to compensate De Benedetti for more than 500 million euros.

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