Sangiuliano insists that culture ministry never spent a euro on Boccia who responds by publishing boarding passes and audio recording.
Italy’s culture minister Gennaro Sangiuliano was left fighting for his political life on Wednesday amid a controversy involving the influencer and fashion entrepreneur Maria Rosaria Boccia.
The row began on 26 August when Boccia published a post on Instagram thanking Sangiuliano for appointing her as adviser to the minister for major events, an appointment later denied by the ministry.
Boccia, who has been photographed accompanying the minister to multiple events around Italy over the summer, contested Sangiuliano’s claim that his ministry did not pay her any money as an advisor.
“I never paid for anything, I was always told the ministry paid back advisors’ expenses”, she told newspaper The Pressadding: “all trips were always organised by the minister’s chief of cabinet”.
Boccia, 41, also disputed Sangiuliano’s claims that she had never taken part in operational meetings on an upcoming G7 culture summit in Pompeii.
She also contested the claim that she was not included in email exchanges containing classified information about the organisation of the G7 meeting in Pompeii, despite allegedly not having security clearence, news agency ANSA reports.
Amid growing calls from the opposition for his resignation, Sangiuliano was summoned by premier Giorgia Meloni to Palazzo Chigi on Tuesday, with many expecting him to resign.
However the embattled minister survived, for now, telling reporters that he had “reiterated the truth” of his statements published by La Stampa on Tuesday morning.
“I don’t understand how they can ask for my resignation” – he told The Press – “I have done nothing wrong, either on a legal or an institutional level”.
Sangiuliano, 62, said that “never a euro of the ministry, not even a coffee” was spent on trips and overnight stays for Boccia who in relation to the organisation of the G7 culture summit, “never had access to documents of a classified nature”.
During the trips between June and August, Sangiuliano said: “I paid for everything with my personal credit card”, adding that he has receipts and bank statements “for all the places we went together, from Taormina to Polignano, from Sanremo to Milan”.
Only in Riva Ligure “did the mayor insist on paying for everything himself and we were his guests”, Sangiuliano said.
As for the use of the ministerial car with police escort, Sangiuliano stated that Boccia “always got in it only with me, never alone. Always for short trips, maybe to the station”.
He then made comparisons to other senior Italian politicians, including deputy premier Matteo Salvini, who may have done the same with their partners in the past.
The Press noted that the minister’s comparison sounded like the admission of a private relationship between him and Boccia.
“It’s the reason why we blocked her nomination as advisor for major events” – Sangiuliano said – “She had the curriculum and the credentials to carry out that role, but when our mutual professional esteem became a private matter, I was the first to feel that everything had to be stopped. They should applaud me for this”.
On Tuesday night Boccia added further fuel to the fire by publishing a screenshot of an email titled “Sangiuliano/Boccia flights”, sent from the minister’s secretary, with airline boarding passes.
More explosively, Boccia also published an audio recording of her phonecall with a culture ministry official regarding the decree formalising her “appointment as advisor to the minister for major events”.
In the audio Boccia says: “The decree has arrived, the minister has signed it…“, to which the ministry official responds: “Yes, yes, yes, we saw it”.
Sangiuliano is facing calls from the opposition to explain himself before parliament, with the populist Movimento 5 Stelle (M5s) describing the situation as akin to a “second-rate soap opera”.
The M5S group leaders in the culture commissions of the chamber and senate, Antonio Caso and Luca Pirondini, asked if the culture ministry and “an entire government can be held hostage by the social media posts of a private citizen who regularly denies and casts shadows on Gennaro Sangiuliano’s statements?”, asking: “Can a self-respecting prime minister, at such a crucial time for the country and with very delicate dossiers to deal with, spend her time following the updates on Maria Rosaria Boccia’s social media channel from Pompeii?”
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