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 January 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 told press.
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 400,000EUR. "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. She awaits a ruling from Italy’s Supreme Court on whether the charges that Santanchè defrauded the National Institute for Social Security’s (INPS’) Covid-era layoff fund should fall under Rome or Milan’s jurisdiction. After news of those fraud allegations came to light last spring, the tourism minister handily survived a Conte-backed motion of no confidence.
And 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.
More pressing are the increasingly energetic calls for 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."
Santanchè called the clamor 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 ruling that she had not heard from the Prime Minister.
“I imagine she has many important things to do,” Santanchè said.
Italian media reported without attribution that over lunch at Palazzo Chigi on January 21, the Prime Minister asked Senate President Ignazio La Russa, Santanchè’s fast friend, to convince the tourism minister to resign. La Russa denied the reports.
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