The Minister Daniela Santanchè: An Important Figure in the Italian Power Balance and Some of her Problems

Daniela Santanchè, an Italian politician and businesswoman, is often in the newspapers and on TV. Since 22th of October 2022 she has been Minister of Tourism in Giorgia Meloni's government.

Her political biography is long: She was a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 2001 to 2008, elected on the lists of „Alleanza Nazionale“ (extreme right-wing party). She later ran for Premier for the list „La Destra - Fiamma Tricolore“ in 2008, but was not elected. She was then undersecretary to the Prime Minister with responsibility for implementing the government programme of the Berlusconi IV government from 1st of March 2010 to 16th November 2011. She was finally re-elected to Parliament in 2013 with „Il Popolo della Libertà“, joining Berlusconi's „Forza Italia“ in November of the same year. In December 2017, she switched to „Fratelli d'Italia“ of Meloni.

Santanchè is often in the newspapers, not in the headlines for her work as a minister. For example, the Minister of Tourism is under investigation for false accounting and for fraud against the Inps (National Institute for Social Security). In both cases the charges concern the „Visibilia“ group. And in the next time the indictment could come. Parliament will discuss a new no-confidence motion against her in the near future.

Santanchè is at the centre of a political case that has seen much of the opposition call for her resignation with a motion that was debated in April. The controversy was sparked by an investigation by the TV magazine „Report“ published last year. In the episode aired on 19th of  June 2023, the programme had collected the testimonies of some employees of Visibilia, the group founded by Santanchè, and of „Ki Group“, a company of which the minister was a partner.

The journalistic accusations against Santanchè concerned an alleged irresponsible management of the companies in question. Ki Group allegedly accumulated debts with suppliers, even putting some of them in serious difficulty, and dismissed some employees without paying them severance pay. For two strands of investigation linked to the Visibilia group, on the other hand, the Minister is being investigated by the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office with two hypotheses of crime: false accounting and, as emerged a few weeks ago, fraud against the Inps.

Together with her in the register of suspects in both cases is her partner Dimitri Kuntz D'Asburgo. There had also been talks of bankruptcy, but this remained pending and could fall into the future.

The political and media case had been kicked off by an investigation by TV magazin „Report“ (Rai 3), entitled „Open to bankruptcy“. The enquiry had investigated the Minister's entrepreneurial activities with regard to the Visibilia group and the Ki Group company. Over the years, the accounting management of the Visibilia group (which brings together four separate companies, and in which Santanchè was a majority shareholder until the beginning of 2022) would have been opaque. There would have been various irregularly recorded transactions intended to give new liquidity to the group.

The false accounting hypothesis concerns the company Visibilia Editore for the years 2016 to 2022. The investigation was opened at the end of 2022, following a complaint by minority shareholders. Minister Santanchè is under investigation, and news should already be coming in the next few weeks as to whether the public prosecutor's office intends to request an indictment.

In this context, during the Covid pandemic, some Visibilia Editore employees were allegedly laid off without their knowledge. This concerns the second line of investigation, in which the Minister is under investigation for fraud against the Inps. The company is alleged to have put several workers on the Covid zero-hour lay-off scheme without informing them. They were allegedly not obliged to work, but continued to do so while the company received state contributions to pay them.

The news of the closure of the investigation reignited protests from the opposition, who demanded her resignation. The Minister, who had said in the Senate that the employee who had denounced the situation had „never set foot inside the company again“ after the beginning of the lay-off, made it known that she is not considering leaving her post. However, the political pressure could become even stronger if an indictment comes.

Another case, which, however, does not concern Santanchè directly and has not been mentioned by the opposition among the reasons why the minister should resign, is that of the sale of a villa in Versilia, in Forte dei Marmi. As it turns out, Laura De Cicco (wife of Ignazio La Russa, an important man in Meloni’s party) and Dimitri Kunz D'Asburgo (Santanchè's partner) bought the villa in January 2023 for 2.4 million Euro. They resold it, just an hour later, for €3.450m, a capital gain of €1m.

Buying and reselling a villa, of course, is not a crime. The two people involved assured that everything took place in the open and in complete transparency.

The journalistic accusations against Santanchè, which have taken a back seat politically because they have not been followed up judicially at the moment, concern the Ki Group organic food company. The accusation is that another company, Ki Group Srl, was created to deal with the debts of Ki Group Spa. The old company is alleged to have held millions of Euro in debts with suppliers, and in the transition between the two, several dismissals took place without the payment of severance pay.

A less central aspect of the accusations levelled at Minister Santanchè also concerns the non-payment of some fines in recent years. Some newspapers had reported that from 2015 to 2019 a Maserati leased by the minister would have received 462 assessments, most of them for entering the „Ztl“ (limited traffic zone). There were also 43 unpaid parking fines. In the Senate, Santanchè had then given her version of the facts: it would have been a matter of fines „within the competence of the Carabinieri Corps“, because the Maserati in question would have been given „on gratuitous loan so as not to burden the state-owned escort cars“.

Until now Meloni seems not to intend to separate from Santanchè. But that could change when the opposition groups become stronger in the next regional and local elections.

(Based on material from www.fanpage.it/)