Silvio Berlusconi

Berlusconi rose into the financial elite of Italy in the late 1960s. He was the controlling shareholder of Mediaset and owned the Italian football club AC Milan from 1986 to 2017. He was nicknamed Il Cavaliere ('The Knight') for his Order of Merit for Labour. In 2009, Forbes ranked him 12th in the list of the World's Most Powerful People due to his domination of Italian politics throughout more than 15 years at the head of the centre-right coalition. He was the longest serving post-war prime minister of Italy, and the third-longest-serving since Italian unification, after Mussolini and Giovanni Giolitti. He was the leader of the centre-right party Forza Italia from 1994 to 2009, and its successor party The People of Freedom from 2009 to 2013. He led the revived Forza Italia in 2013.

On 1 August 2013, Berlusconi was convicted of tax fraud by the Supreme Court of Cassation. His four-year prison sentence was confirmed, and he was banned from holding public office for two years. Aged 76, he was exempted from direct imprisonment, and instead served his sentence by doing unpaid community service. Three years of his sentence were automatically pardoned under Italian law; because he had been sentenced to gross imprisonment for more than two years, he was banned from holding legislative office for six years and expelled from the Senate. Berlusconi pledged to stay leader of Forza Italia throughout his custodial sentence and public office ban. After his ban ended, he returned to the Senate after winning a seat in the 2022 Italian general election, then died the following year from complications of chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, and was given a state funeral.

Berlusconi was known for his populist political style and brash personality; his views and rhetoric, often referred to as Berlusconism, have deeply reshaped the Italian political landscape. In his long tenure, he was often accused of being a a strongman. At the height of his power, Berlusconi was the richest person in Italy, owned three of the main TV channels of the country, and indirectly controlled the national broadcasting company RAI through his own government. He was the owner of Italy's biggest publishing company, several newspapers and magazines, and one of the main football clubs in Europe. At the time of his death, The Guardian wrote that Berlusconi "gathered himself more power than was ever wielded by one individual in a Western democracy". Berlusconi remained a controversial figure who divided public opinion and political analysts.

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