former Socialist prime minister and leader of the Italian Socialist Party convicted in 1994, for various corruption charges. The Milan magistrates who indicted and successfully convicted Mr. Craxi in their "Clean Hands" investigation laid bare an entrenched system in which businessmen paid hundreds of millions of dollars to political parties or individual politicians in exchange for sweetheart deals with Italian state companies and the government itself. Berlusconi acknowledges a personal friendship with Craxi. Freedom Army On 28 May 2013, Berlusconi and his entourage launched an online initiative which consisted of the recruitment of volunteers, who are available to defend Berlusconi from the convictions of Milan's prosecutors, who were dealing with his trials, and whom Berlusconi often accused of being communists and anti-democratic. Simone Furlan, the creator of the Freedom Army, said in an interview: "There comes a time in life, when you realize that fighting for an ideal is no longer a choice but an obligation. We civil society we were helpless spectators of the 'War of the Twenty Years' which saw Berlusconi fight and defend against slanderous accusations of all kinds, the result of a judicial persecution without precedent in history." This initiative, launched as Freedom Army, has been immediately nicknamed "Silvio's Army" by the media, and was condemned by the Democratic Party, the Five Star Movement and Left Ecology Freedom. Wiretaps and accusations of corruption In December 2007, the audio recording of a phone call between Berlusconi, then leader of the opposition, and Agostino Saccà (general director of RAI) were published by the magazine L'Espresso and caused a scandal in the media. The wiretap was part of an investigation by the Public Prosecutor Office of Naples, where Berlusconi was investigated for corruption. In the phone call, Saccà expresses words of impassioned political support to Berlusconi and criticises the behaviour of Berlusconi's allies. Berlusconi urges Saccà to broadcast a telefilm series which was strongly advocated by his ally Umberto Bossi. Saccà laments that many people have spread rumours on this agreement causing problems to him. Then Berlusconi asks Saccà to find a job in RAI for a young woman explicitly telling him that this woman would serve as an asset in a secret exchange with a senator of the majority who would help him to cause Prodi, with his administration, to fall. After the publication of these wiretaps, Berlusconi has been accused by other politicians and by some journalists