Minetti case, Monday meeting of the magistrates in charge of the file to take stock

The first partial results of the foreign investigations, in Spain and Uruguay, requested by the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office in the supplementary investigation into the case of the pardon requested and obtained by Nicole Minetti after doubts were raised over the truthfulness of the documents accompanying the petition and suspicions that Silvio Berlusconi's former mental hygienist, sentenced to 2 years and 10 months for exploitation of prostitution in the Ruby case and to 1 year and 1 month for the Lombardy Rimborsopoli, had not cut ties with her former life.

Already on Monday, 4 May, on the Milan side, the Prosecutor General, Francesca Nanni, and the Deputy Prosecutor, Gaetano Brusa, will take stock of the situation. The checks, delegated to the Interpol, concern the adoption deed - of which they want the original copy - of the baby by Minetti and her partner Giuseppe Cipriani, and the procedure followed. They want to understand whether the biological parents of the child, who is also ill, really did abandon him to the Inau, the South American country's adoption agency, and whether the mother in particular lost track of her. The same applies with regard to the death, in a domestic accident, of the child's guardian lawyer: she was found at home charred with her husband.

Moreover, one of the nodal points of the supplementary investigation conducted through foreign rogatory letters, concerns a re-verification of possible criminal proceedings against the 41-year-old woman - who appears to have no debt to justice, except for that for which she received clemency, and no registration as a suspect - and also of her movements between her Uruguayan residence in Punta de l'Este, her villa in Ibiza, Milan, Rome and even Boston for the child's care. A fundamental point, finally, is to ascertain that she has really distanced herself from her previous life, with a 'serious desire for social redemption'.

Should these new verifications, also requested by the Hill, reveal 'unfavourable' elements or in any case doubts as to the truthfulness of what is claimed in the pardon proposal, the General Prosecutor's Office will probably revise and revise the opinion.

Meanwhile, Il Foglio wrote that in the next few days the Minister of Justice Carlo Nordio will bring a civil action for damages against the journalist Sigfrido Ranucci, for the statements made by the Report presenter on the programme 'È sempre Cartabianca', on Rete 4, on the possible presence of the minister at the ranch of Giuseppe Cipriani, Nicole Minetti's partner, in Uruguay. Il Foglio cites qualified sources in the ministry. In the claim for compensation,' explains the Foglio, 'reference will be made to the damage to the reputation and image of the Guardasigilli produced by the dissemination of news that has not yet been verified, in violation of the Italian Journalists' Code of Ethics, which requires journalists to verify the reliability of information gathered before disseminating it. Any sums obtained as a result of the compensation action will be donated to charity. "One of our sources reportedly saw Minister Nordio at Cipriani's ranch in Uruguay in March. If it is true, it is news. We are verifying it,' said the Report host on Bianca Berlinguer's programme on Tuesday. The reference is to the affair of the pardon granted to Nicole Minetti, Cipriani's companion. A few minutes later Minister Nordio intervened live by telephone to deny the reconstruction hypothesised by the Report presenter. 'At the beginning of March this year, I was busy campaigning for the referendum,' he explained.