Licio Gelli, fascist and masonic chief

Freemasons are often portrayed as this shadowy occult group consisting of wealthy, powerful men who manipulate businesses and governments from behind the scenes. Freemasons deny this of course, but then there's the case of the Italian lodge Propaganda Due (P2). From ft.com:

When officers from Italy’s tax police raided a Tuscan business on the outskirts of Arezzo on March 17, 1981, they made one of the most politically explosive findings in their 240-year history.

They uncovered a list of 962 people who were part of a secret masonic lodge known as Propaganda Due or P2 plotting to destabilise Italy’s democratic order, if deemed necessary, to protect the country from communist rule.

The property belonged to Licio Gelli, the grandmaster of the organisation, who has died aged 96. Other members spanned the Italian military, the secret services, the political establishment and even business. Also on the list was Silvio Berlusconi, then a budding media mogul, later to become three-time Italian prime minister, though he has denied ever being part of the group.

“We had Italy in our hands,” Gelli, an unrepentant fascist, said in a 2008 interview. “We would never have wanted to attack, but we were like a sentinel, carefully ensuring that the Communist party should never emerge.”