Structure
The Fininvest group is composed of a number important companies: Mediolanum (an insurance and banking company), Medusa (a major Italian film production company), Mondadori (one of Italy's leading publishing companies), A.C. Milan (a football team) and Mediaset, which is currently the biggest private entertainment competitor in Italy, owning three channels (Canale 5, Italia 1, Rete 4), two channels in Spain, Endemol, a digital TV broadcasting network and many other companies related to TV broadcasting.
The Berlusconi family doesn't control the company directly. Instead, its shares are owned by 38 separate companies, all named 'Holding Italiana' followed by a number (1-38), most of which are in turn controlled by Berlusconi. These 'Holding Italiane' have repeatedly come under investigation by the police for various financial and accounting irregularities, slush funds and money-laundering. All of them were created at the end of the 1970s by covert associates of Berlusconi's and received significant investments (several hundreds of millions of euros at today's value) from still unknown sources. Some of their liquidity was even deposited in cash. Much of the documentation of that time relative to the early financial and banking operations of these companies has been lost, in one case in a fire.
A report on those matters was commissioned by the general Dipartimento Investigativo Anti-Mafia (Bureau of Anti-Mafia Investigation) of Palermo in the 1990s from a finance expert working at the Bank of Italy, Francesco Giuffrida, to supplement the evidence in a tentative case against Berlusconi and associates for their alleged involvement with the Sicilian Mafia. In 1998 the case was temporarily shelved because of lack of sufficient evidence to go to trial. The case was reopened in 2009.
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