Silvio Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi (born 29 September 1936) is an Italian politician and media tycoon who served three times as Prime Minister of Italy: from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. Berlusconi is also the controlling shareholder of Mediaset and owner of A.C. Milan. He is nicknamed Il Cavaliere (The Knight) for his Order of Merit for Labour. Berlusconi is the longest-serving post-war Prime Minister of Italy, and third longest-serving since the Unification of Italy, after Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Giolitti, holding three separate terms. Technically, he has been sworn in four times because after a cabinet reshuffle, as happened with Berlusconi in 2005, the new ministry is sworn in and subjected to a vote of confidence. He is the leader of the People of Freedom political movement, a centre-right party he founded in 2009. From November 2009 to November 2011, he was the most senior leader of the G8 countries. In 2012, Forbes magazine ranked him as the 169th richest man in the world with a net worth of US$5.9 billion.

Berlusconi's political rise was rapid. He was elected as a Member of the Chamber of Deputies for the first time and appointed as Prime Minister following the March 1994 parliamentary elections, when Forza Italia gained a relative majority a mere three months after having been officially launched. However, his cabinet collapsed after nine months, due to internal disagreements in his coalition. In the April 1996 snap parliamentary elections, Berlusconi was defeated by the centre-left candidate Romano Prodi. In the May 2001 parliamentary elections, he was again the centre-right candidate for Prime Minister and won against the centre-left candidate Francesco Rutelli. Berlusconi then formed his second and third cabinets, until 2006. Berlusconi was leader of the centre-right coalition in the April 2006 parliamentary elections, which he lost by a very narrow margin, his opponent again being Romano Prodi. He was re-elected in the parliamentary elections of April 2008 following the collapse of Prodi's government and sworn in for a third time as Prime Minister on 8 May 2008.

Berlusconi's terms in office were controversial. Berlusconi was criticised for his electoral coalitions with the xenophobic Lega Nord and the post-fascist National Alliance and for his apologist rhetoric about Italian Fascism and Benito Mussolini. Yet although Berlusconi allied with the National Alliance and gave controversial appraisements of Mussolini, he went to Libya in 2008 to provide an official apology and financial compensation from Italy to Libya for the brutalities of Italian colonial rule, especially regarding the repressive actions of the Pacification of Libya during the Fascist era. Berlusconi's agreement with Libya was unprecedented in that it made Italy the first country to ever offer substantial financial compensation to an ex-colony on the basis of recognition of injustice of the colonial rule. His leadership was undermined by sex scandals.

After losing his majority in parliament amid growing fiscal problems related to the European debt crisis, Berlusconi officially resigned as Prime Minister on 16 November 2011. According to media reports, Berlusconi wants to make a comeback as PM and is preparing himself as the head of the party for elections to be held in 2013. On 26 October 2012, Berlusconi was convicted of fraud by an Italian court for tax evasion. He remains free and is expected to appeal the decision.