ROME – Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio was left to regret his previous “mud-slinging” towards the family of Democratic Party member Maria Elena Boschi on Tuesday after a scandal over his father’s business emerged, La Repubblica reports.

“I’d like to look Mr Antonio Di Maio, father of Luigi, in the face and say that I hope he doesn’t go through what his son and his friends put my father and my family through,” Boschi said in an emotive video posted on her Twitter in response to reports of ‘black work’ in a construction company owned by the Di Maio family.

 “My father was dragged through the mud by a campaign of hatred … because of his surname,” she continued, referencing the Deputy Prime Minister’s treatment of the Boschi family after the bankruptcy of Banca Etruria, of which her father was vice-president.  “Mr Di Maio, mud-slinging is disgusting,” the opposition party member concluded, decrying the abuse and hateful rhetoric directed towards her father by the Deputy Prime Minister and other members of the Five Star Movement.

 Salvatore Pizzo, a former employee of Antonio Di Maio, revealed in a broadcast by ‘La Iene’ on Sunday that he worked for the construction company “in the black” for two years and was advised by Di Maio Senior not to report an injury he sustained while on the job, in order that the company avoided penalties. Instead, Pizzo was assured that his boss would “cover” the cost of the injury.

 Immediately after the broadcast, the M5S leader took to Facebook to distance himself from his father’s actions, posting, “my father has made mistakes in life and I distance myself from this behaviour, but he is still my father.” He went on to deny any personal involvement with the incident, despite owning 50 percent of the company in question and having worked there for a time, and promised to verify the validity of Pizzo’s claims as quickly as possible.