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. In this capacity, he engineered the sale of her villa in Arcore to Berlusconi, for 500 million lire, paid in the form of shares in then-unquoted companies. Many people would later cry foul, claiming that the amount was insufficient by far. In the end, she found herself forced to sell back the shares to Berlusconi and Previti for 250 million lire, half their previous value.