Santanchè, from Bioera to the alleged fraud at the Inps: all the minister's judicial troubles (and where she risks the most)

The list of Bioera's bankruptcy has lengthened with the entry of Daniela Santanchè in the register of suspects for alleged bankruptcy. The tourism minister was already charged with bankruptcy for the collapse of Ki Group srl, a company in the bio-food galaxy of which the Fratelli d'Italia senator was president until 2021. In June, the bankruptcy court of Milan declared the opening of judicial liquidation also for Ki Group Holding spa: further possible bankruptcy charges could come from here.

Not only: Santanchè is on trial in Milan for the alleged false accounting of Visibilia and, in a separate file but still linked to the same publishing group she founded and from which she later divested herself of offices and shares, she risks another for the charge of aggravated fraud against the Inps. Of the judicial cluster, this last one is the most insidious line of investigation given the type of accusation (defrauding a state body): only in the case of indictment could the government exponent decide to relinquish her post.

Santanchè, on the other hand, will not have to face the proceedings for defamation that had been ordered against her by the monocratic court of Rome for some statements made during one of her reports to the Senate on 5 July 2023 against Giuseppe Zeno, a minority shareholder of the company Visibilia Editore Spa. On 26 January 2026, the Senate Committee on Immunities recognised that those opinions expressed in the Chamber were not indefeasible and therefore denied authorisation to proceed against the senator. In favour of the proposal of the rapporteur, the leghista Spelgatti, the centre-right with Pd and Italia viva voted, the M5s and Avs voted against.

The preliminary hearing for aggravated fraud against the Italian National Social Security Institute (INPS), in which the minister is accused along with four others, including two companies of the Visibilia publishing group, remains frozen until at least 20 February: the Constitutional Court's ruling on the conflict of attribution with the Public Prosecutor's Office raised by the Senate on the unusability of some acts is awaited. In October, Milan Judge Tiziana Gueli had decided to suspend the proceedings pending the Constitutional Court's ruling on the conflict of attribution with the Public Prosecutor's Office raised by the Senate on the unusability of some documents. Thus accepting the request of the MP's lawyers, Salvatore Pino and Nicolò Pelanda, while the prosecutors had opposed it.

In July 2025, the Santanchè defence had raised the issue of the 'unusability of environmental conversations recorded by Eugenio Moschini', former editor of Pc Professionale, a magazine of the Visibilia group, while he was talking to the senator, 'and acquired to the file'. And which had to pass, for the defence, through the Senate's authorisation to proceed. And also on the 'unusability', for the same reason, of e-mails and chats 'in which the senator appears to be the sender or recipient'. On 24 September, Palazzo Madama had approved the proposal to open the conflict before the Constitutional Court. And so the defence loaded the exception already presented with an application to stop the preliminary hearing, which was accepted by the judge.