Fraud indictment fuels pressure for tourism minister to quit

ROME — The Left upped pressure for tourism minister Daniela Santanchè to resign after a Milan judge ruled on Jan. 17 that the embattled senator will stand trial for financial crimes this March.

Five Star Movement leader Giuseppe Conte told press he planned to call a motion of no confidence in Santanchè. “Parliament has the duty not to close its eyes,” the former Prime Minister said.

Prosecutors allege that over at least a six-year period, Santanchè and 16 others — including the minister's second husband, current boyfriend, sister, and nephew — profited from falsifying the financial statements of Visibilia Editore, a strategic consulting firm. Until her 2022 appointment in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's cabinet Santanchè served as president, then majority owner, of the publicly-traded company.

Giuseppe Zeno, a Visibilia investor, alleged to press that the Fratelli d'Italia senator's bookkeeping had swindled Visibilia's investors out of between 350,000 and 400,000 euros. "I will be satisfied when I see my money returned," he said.

Santanchè’s lawyer said his client would prove her innocence at trial, set to begin March 20. Even if she does, the minister faces a scrum of other hurdles.

Some are legal. Santanchè, her second husband, and his brother are under investigation for bankruptcy fraud related to Ki group. The organic food giant’s 2023 collapse left its employees scrabbling, and suing, for back pay and severance they claimed not to have received.

And Italy’s Supreme Court on Jan. 30 issued a long-awaited ruling giving Milan jurisdiction over charges that Santanchè defrauded National Institute for Social Security’s (INPS’) Covid-era layoff fund. After the INPS fraud allegations came to light last spring, the tourism minister survived a Conte-backed motion of no confidence.

More concerning to the tourism minister may be the increasingly energetic calls for her dismissal. The Cassazione’s ruling stepped up already-energetic chatter about the tourism minister’s dismissal.

"In the past, Meloni asked for the dismissal of any minister if he so much as rustled some leaves," Conte told press.

"Now," Democratic Party secretary Elly Schlein said, "she does what? Changes her mind on this as well? A prime minister cannot use double standards, above all towards friends whom she wanted in government and for whom now she is politically responsible.”

Santanché called the clamour for her resignation “surreal.” She would step down if Meloni asked her to, the minister said. 

But she told press the day after the Milan court’s Jan. 17 ruling that she had not heard from the prime minister. “I imagine she has many important things to do,” Santanché said. 

Italian media reported without attribution that over lunch at Palazzo Chigi on Jan. 21, the prime minister asked Senate President Ignazio La Russa to convince the tourism minister to resign. La Russa denied the reports. 

Santanchè “will remain my friend whether she is a minister or not,” he said.

jlb