Born in Reggio Calabria, he grew up in Rome, where he started practicing law. In 1971 he became acquainted with Silvio Berlusconi, the construction magnate, later to be media mogul and Prime Minister of Italy. He was the administrator of the property of a nineteen-year-old girl, whose father, the Marquess Casati Stampa, had killed her mother and her mother's lover before committing suicide in a celebrated case...