The latter provided protection to Craxi when he escaped from Italy.

Craxi led the 2nd longest-lived government of Italy during the republican era ( after the 2nd Silvio Berlusconi cabinet ), and had strong influence in Italian politics throughout the 1980s ; for some time, he was a close ally of two key figures of Christian Democracy, Giulio Andreotti and Arnaldo Forlani, in a loose cross-party alliance often dubbed CAF ( from the first letter of the surname Craxi-Andreotti-Forlani ).

Craxi had a firm grasp on a party previously troubled by factionalism, and tried to distance it from the communists and to bring it closer to Christian Democrats and other parties ; his objective was to create an Italian version of European reformist socialist parties, like the German SPD or the French Socialist Party.

Though the Americans demanded that the Italian authorities extradite Abu Abbas of the PLO, Craxi stood firm on the grounds that the crime had been perpetrated on Italian territory, on which the Italian Republic had sole jurisdiction.

In December 1993, after finally allowing to be investigated, Craxi was called to testify in front of Justice Antonio Di Pietro, the magistrate who had provoked what Craxi called a " false Revolution " ( i. e., his prosecution ).

Craxi was also known for never apologising, as a matter of principle ; whereas some did like this autocratic trait in his successful years, most Italians expected an apology after the corrupt system had been exposed.

Craxi never apologised, stating he had done nothing that everybody else had not been doing, and that he was being unjustly singled out and persecuted.

The powerful secretary of the Italian Socialist Party, Bettino Craxi, is often taken as a typical example, since he had a permanent residence in an expensive hotel in Rome's centre and also owned a villa in Hammamet, Tunisia.

Bettino Craxi accumulated several years of jailing in definitive convictions and had to escape to Tunisia, where he remained until his death on 19 January 2000.

Bettino Craxi had visited Algiers in November 1984, being warned by the president Chadli Benjedid that Algeria was ready to invade that region of Tunisia that was crossed by the pipeline towards Italy, if Bourguiba was not able to guarantee the stability of his own country.

Italian historians of the period have suggested that Craxi, Forlani and Giulio Andreotti had signed a secret pact to control the politics of Italy: from the initials of their surnames, this pact was named CAF.

In this respect he followed a line similar to that of Craxi, with whom he had an otherwise troubled political relationship.

The party was founded in 2001 by the merger of the Socialist Party of Gianni De Michelis, the Socialist League of Claudio Martelli and Bobo Craxi ( son of Bettino ), who had been founding members of the Italian Democratic Socialists in 1998, other splinters of that party, as Mauro Del Bue, and former members of the Italian Democratic Socialist Party.

His leadership however had been contested in the congress of October 2005 where the son of Bettino Craxi, Bobo Craxi claimed to have been declared secretary after De Michelis had left the hall declaring the Congress void.

From the beginning Craxi tried to undermine the PCI, which until then had been continuously increasing its votes in elections, and to consolidate the PSI as a modern, strongly pro-European reformist social-democratic party, with deep roots in the democratic left-wing.

The PSI, that had obtained only 11 %, threatened to leave the parliamentary majority unless Craxi was made Prime Minister.

The alternative which Craxi had wanted so much was taking shape: the idea of a " Social Unity " with the other left-wing political parties, including the PCI, proposed by Craxi in 1989 after the fall of communism.

Craxi denounced Chiesa by calling him an isolated thief, who had nothing to do with the party as a whole.

But the President was influenced by other political leaders like Giovanni Spadolini of the Italian Republican Party and Bettino Craxi of the Italian Socialist Party, and the PCI remained out of the government.

It detailed the payment of US $ 7 million by the president of ENI, Florio Fiorini through Roberto Calvi to the Italian Socialist Party ( PSI ) leader Claudio Martelli on behalf of Bettino Craxi, the socialist Prime Minister from 1983 – 1987.

In any case, the victory of the " No " front in the referendum called by the Italian Communist Party was also a major victory for Craxi.

Craxi greeted by a salvo of coins as a sign of loathing by protesters.

In July 1992, Craxi finally realised the situation was serious, and that he himself was going to be hit by the unfolding scandal.

Craxi took 5 more months to realise the full scale of the events, but some important MPs took even longer and by the time they knew, everything was done and they were wiped off the political map and thrown in jail.

An ironic note was that the disgraced remnant of the party was excluded from Parliament by the minimum 4 % threshold introduced by Bettino Craxi himself during one of his previous governments.

See also: Tangentopoli ( Italian for bribeville, used to indicate the corruption-based system that ruled Italy ; Craxi is seen by many as its symbol )

In the meantime, the investigation of Craxi was blocked by the parliament.

They considered themselves the true heirs of Pietro Nenni, Giuseppe Saragat and Bettino Craxi, continued to declare themselves ' Socialists ' and were sided with Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right because they saw the Italian centre-left as too much hegemonized by the Democrats of the Left, heir of the Italian Communist Party, which was the harshest rival of the Italian Socialists from the Fifties to the Nineties.

The revision of the Lateran treaties during the 1980s by the Socialist Prime Minister of Italy Bettino Craxi, removed the status of " official religion " of the Catholic Church, but still granted a series of provisions in favour of the Church, such as the eight per thousand law, the teaching of religion in schools, and other privileges.

* Bettino Craxi, Italian statesman and former prime minister, sentenced in absentia to 27 years in jail in Italy, who previously fled to Hammamet in Tunisia in 1994, and remained a fugitive there, protected by Ben Ali's regime.

In the two governments led by Bettino Craxi ( of Partito Socialista Italiano ) in the 1980s, Forlani was the vice prime minister.

Tension with Craxi re-emerged after the publication of letters by Moro in which Andreotti saw a role for the leader of the PSI.

At its founding congress, the NPSI decided to enter the new centre-right House of Freedoms coalition headed by the former friend of Bettino Craxi, Silvio Berlusconi.

During the congress, which was characterized by a heated atmosphere and several controversies, Bobo Craxi, who supported a " unity towards left " within The Union and an immediate retirement from the Berlusconi government, challenged Gianni De Michelis, who instead asked the congress to delay such a decision.

De Michelis received support from Caldoro, Alessandro Battilocchio, Chiara Moroni, whereas Craxi was supported by Vincenzo Milioto, Francesco Crinò and Saverio Zavettieri, the powerful Calabrian leader of the party.

Craxi himself died in Tunisia, unable to return to Italy where he would have been jailed for several convictions.

In 1994, former Socialist Prime Minister Bettino Craxi was indicted in the Banco Ambrosiano case, along with Licio Gelli, head of Propaganda Due, and former Justice minister Claudio Martelli.

He was, however, never personally involved in the many political scandals of the Bettino Craxi government era, even if Cesare Romiti, Agnelli's most trusted administrator for some 25 years, publicly admitted to bribery in 1994.

The party was disbanded on 13 November 1994 after two years of agony, in which almost all of its longtime leaders, especially Bettino Craxi, were involved in Tangentopoli or decided to leave politics.

* Secretary: Pietro Nenni ( 1931 – 1945 ), Sandro Pertini ( 1945 – 1946 ), Ivan Matteo Lombardo ( 1946 – 1947 ), Lelio Basso ( 1947 – 1948 ), Alberto Jacometti ( 1948 – 1949 ), Pietro Nenni ( 1949 – 1963 ), Francesco De Martino ( 1963 – 1968 ), Mauro Ferri ( 1968 – 1969 ), Francesco De Martino ( 1969 – 1970 ), Giacomo Mancini ( 1970 – 1972 ), Francesco De Martino ( 1972 – 1976 ), Bettino Craxi ( 1976 – 1993 ), Giorgio Benvenuto ( 1993 ), Ottaviano Del Turco ( 1993 – 1994 )

* Party Leader in the Chamber of Deputies: Paolo De Michelis ( 1946 – 1947 ), Pietro Nenni ( 1947 – 1964 ), Mauro Ferri ( 1964 – 1968 ), Flavio Orlandi ( 1968 – 1969 ), Antonio Giolitti ( 1969 – 1970 ), Luigi Bertoldi ( 1970 – 1973 ), Luigi Mariotti ( 1973 – 1976 ), Bettino Craxi ( 1976 ), Vincenzo Balzamo ( 1976 – 1980 ), Silvano Labriola ( 1980 – 1983 ), Rino Formica ( 1983 – 1986 ), Lelio Lagorio ( 1986 – 1987 ), Gianni De Michelis ( 1987 – 1988 ), Nicola Capria ( 1988 – 1991 ), Salvatore Andò ( 1991 – 1992 ), Giuseppe La Ganga ( 1992 – 1993 ), Nicola Capria ( 1993 – 1994 )