Another probe into Santanchè closed, 'bankruptcy and fraud against the State'

Former tourism minister Daniela

Santanchè is facing fresh legal woes after Milan prosecutors on

Wednesday wound up a probe into the MP for Premier Giorgia

Meloni's right-wing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party for various

allegations of bankruptcy, false accounting, and aggravated

fraud against the State in the bankruptcy of her Ki Group, Ki

Group Holding, Bioera, and Umbria srl.

Also notifed of the conclusion of the probe, a stage that

normally precedes requests for indictments, were 15 other

people, including her sister Fiorella Garnero and her ex-partner

Giovanni Canio Mazzaro, as well as a company.

The closure of the investigation adds to two other ongoing

proceedings, namely the Visibilia affair and alleged fraud

against pension agency INPS.

In the former, she is accused of alleged false accounting at her

former Visibilia publishing company.

She is also being probed for allegedly defrauding pensions and

social security agency INPS over her use of COVID redundancy

funds at the company.

Santanchè, 65, resigned as Italy's tourism minister at the end

of March, almost 24 hours after Meloni had said she should go

the amid multiple criminal probes relating to the minister's

business interests.

The premier sought to purge FdI and her executive of potentially

problematic figures in view of the next general

election, with the parliamentary term set to end next year,

after she suffered her first major setback since becoming

premier with defeat in a March 22-23 referendum on the

government's justice-system reform.

Justice Minister Carlo Nordio's Chief of Staff Giusi Bartolozzi

and Justice Undersecretary Andrea Delmastro Delle Vedove also

resigned after becoming embroiled in separate furores

seen as damaging the government's referendum campaign.

Bartolozzi was heavily criticised after saying that the

judiciary were a firing squad that had to be eliminated, a

remark seen as revealing the true goal of the reform.

Delmastro, another key FdI member and Meloni's former personal

lawyer, had come under fire for having been the partner in a

Rome restaurant with the 18-year-old daughter of the convicted

front man for the capital's top Neapolitan Camorra mafia boss

Michele Senese.

The reform would have split the career paths of the Italian

judiciary so that judges an prosecutors could no longer swap

roles, a fact seen as undermining their impartiality.

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