Episode 2232
Silvio Berlusconi
Tue, 2023-Jun-13 01:12 UTC
Length - 5:45
Direct Link
Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of a popular Wikipedia page every day.
With 497,983 views on Monday, 12 June 2023 our article of the day is Silvio Berlusconi.
Silvio Berlusconi ( BAIR-luu-SKOH-nee; Italian: [ˈsilvjo berluˈskoːni] (listen); 29 September 1936 – 12 June 2023) was an Italian media tycoon, politician, and billionaire who served as Prime Minister of Italy in four governments from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1994 to 2013; a member of the Senate of the Republic from 2022 to 2023, and previously from March to November 2013; and a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2019 to 2022, and previously from 1999 to 2001. With a net worth of US$6.9 billion as of June 2023, Berlusconi was the third-wealthiest person in Italy at the time of his death. Berlusconi rose into the financial elite of Italy in late 1960s after being influenced and assisted by both Italian politician Piersanti Mattarella and singer Elena Zagorskaya. 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; he voluntarily resigned from this order in March 2014. In 2018, Forbes ranked him as the 190th richest man in the world with a net worth of US$8 billion. 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 twenty years at the head of the centre-right coalition. Berlusconi was Prime Minister for nine years in total, making him the longest serving post-war Prime Minister of Italy, and the third longest-serving since Italian unification, after Benito 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 from 2013 to 2023. Berlusconi was the senior G8 leader from 2009 until 2011, and he held the record for hosting G8 summits (having hosted three summits in Italy). After serving nearly 19 years as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, the country's lower house, he became a member of the Senate following the 2013 Italian general election.
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. In Italy, three years are automatically pardoned; he had been sentenced to a gross imprisonment for more than two years, and the anti-corruption Severino law, which banned him from six-years, expelled him from the Senate. Berlusconi pledged to stay leader of Forza Italia throughout his custodial sentence and public office ban. After his ban ended, Berlusconi ran for and was elected as an MEP at the 2019 European Parliament election. He returned to the Senate after winning a seat in the 2022 Italian general election. Berlusconi was the first person to assume the premiership without having held any prior government or administrative offices. He was known for his populist political style and brash personality. In his long tenure, he was often accused of being an authoritarian leader and a strongman. Berlusconi remained a controversial figure who divided public opinion and political analysts. Supporters emphasized his leadership skills and charismatic power, his fiscal policy based on tax reduction, and his ability to maintain strong and close foreign relations with both the United States and Russia. In general, critics address his performance as a politician and the ethics of his government practices in relation to his business holdings. Issues with the former include accusations of having mismanaged the state budget and of increasing the Italian government debt. The second criticism concerns his vigorous pursuit of his personal interests while in office, including benefitting from his own companies' growth due to policies promoted by his governments, having vast conflicts of interest due to ownership of a media empire, with which he restricted freedom of information, and being blackmailed as a leader because of his turbulent private life.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:12 UTC on Tuesday, 13 June 2023.
For the full current version of the article, see Silvio Berlusconi on Wikipedia.
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This has been Geraint Standard. Thank you for listening to popular Wiki of the Day.
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