Silvio Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi (born 29 September 1936) is an Italian media tycoon, politician and convicted criminal 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 and has served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) since 2019, and previously from 1999 to 2001.

Berlusconi was Italy's Prime Minister for nine years, making him the country's longest-serving postwar leader and the third-longest since the country's unification, behind Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Giolitti. From 1994 to 2009, he was the head of the center-right party Forza Italia, and from 2009 to 2013, he led the successor party The People of Freedom. He has been the leader of a resurgent Forza Italia since November 2013. From 2009 to 2011, Berlusconi was the senior G8 leader, and he now retains the record for holding the most G8 summits (having hosted three Summits in Italy). Following the 2013 general election, he was elected to the Senate after nearly 19 years as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, Italy's lower chamber.

Berlusconi is the majority stakeholder in Mediaset and was the owner of AC Milan, an Italian football club, from 1986 until 2017. For his Order of Merit for Labor, he is known as Il Cavaliere (The Knight), albeit he voluntarily withdrew from the order in March 2014. With an estimated net worth of $8 billion, Forbes magazine listed him as the 190th wealthiest man in the planet in 2018. Due to his dominance of Italian politics for more than two decades as the leader of the center-right alliance, Forbes rated him 12th on the List of The World's Most Powerful People in 2009.

Net worth: $6.3 Billion