Marcello Dell'Utri (born 11 September 1941) is a former Italian politician and senior advisor to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Formerly Senator in the Italian Senate. Dell'Utri has been found guilty of tax fraud, false accounting, and complicity in conspiracy with the Sicilian Mafia; the conviction for the last charge has been upheld on 9 May 2014 by the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation which sentenced Dell'Utri to seven years in prison. The conviction is final and cannot be further appealed. The third criminal section of Palermo's Appellate Court declared Dell'Utri a fugitive in May 2014, when it was discovered he had fled the country ahead of the final court decision. After being detained in Lebanon, on 13 June 2014 Dell'Utri was extradited to Italy, where he served 4 years of imprisonment and 1 year of house arrest. He has been further sentenced in April 2018 to 12 years due to the State-Mafia Pact. Business and political activities Dell'Utri was born in Palermo, Sicily. After school in his native city, he went to Milan to study law at university. After graduation, Dell'Utri went back to Palermo to work at the Cassa di Risparmio di Sicilia (Sicilian Savings Bank), but by 1973 he was back in Milan where he began work for Silvio Berlusconi's building firm Edilnord. Late in the 1970s, he went to work at Bresciano Costruzioni, but in 1980 he was called by Berlusconi and worked for Publitalia '80, the advertising sales wing of Fininvest's television division, first as a manager and later as the company's chairman and chief executive. Founder of Forza Italia In 1994 he was one of the founders of Forza Italia, together with Silvio Berlusconi and Cesare Previti; Forza Italia was a big-tent centre-right party, with liberal conservative, Christian democratic and even social democratic factions, whose aim was to collect all the votes of the disbanded Pentapartito, the governing centrist coalition which was dissolved after Tangentopoli scandal. In 1995 Dell'Utri left Publitalia '80, the advertising company owned by Berlusconi. In 1996 he was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies (lower house of the Italian Parliament); while in 1999 he was elected to the European Parliament, of which he stayed member until 2004. In the 2001 general election he was elected as a senator in the Italian Senate, and was re-elected in 2006 and 2008. Collusion with the Mafia Vittorio Mangano In 1973, Dell'Utri introduced Vittorio