The fallout from the grant of a pardon to former Berlusconi employee Nicole Minetti (Pardon Me) has been followed by a scandal that may signify the beginning of the end of the Meloni government.

Readers may remember that Ms Minetti was convicted of supplying prostitutes for former Prime Minister Berlusconi’s bunga bunga sex parties and fraudulently obtaining payments of €19,000 while sitting as an MP in the Lombardy parliament (a position arranged by Berlusconi).

She faced a prison sentence of three years and 11 months. Her lawyers applied for a pardon on the basis that her life had completely changed and that she now had the care of an adopted child with health problems.

The political problems started in mid-April when the news of this pardon broke, and have continued every day since.

Last Friday (May 1, 2026), when Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni fronted a press conference to announce spending millions of euros on a scheme to help young Italians purchase a home – a problem not unknown in Australia – she was asked instead about the Minetti pardon scandal, and she lost it.

Meloni switched to using a Roman dialect to complain that all her work was being wasted, that it was not fair and that it was always like this.

Her outburst became “video of the day” in the newspaper La Repubblica.

One commentator said that her reaction showed that the most painful day in the life of a politician may not be the day that they lose an election, but the day they realise that their political power is slipping away.

How did the granting of Minetti’s pardon lead to this crisis?

Various aspects of the pardon raised suspicions, even though it ultimately may be found to be justified.

First, news of the pardon was not released at the time that it was made in February. It came to light when on April 11, an investigative newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano put it on the front page.

A spokesman for President Mattarella, who granted the pardon on advice, said that by not releasing the news they wanted to protect the privacy of the child involved, that publicity was usual but not required, but maybe in retrospect it was a mistake not to have announced the decision when it was made.

Second, pardons are rarely granted. President Mattarella had granted only 27 pardons from 1,500 applications, according to the newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Third, Attorney General Carlo Nordio had sent a message to the judge assessing the application in November 2025, asking him to “be quick” and that he was “waiting for your opinion to send to the President”.

This was at a time when the Attorney General had the lead role in the campaign for the referendum to limit the powers of investigating magistrates and, one would think, not much time for anything else.

It has also since been alleged by a journalist on one of the state-owned RAI TV channels that the Attorney General had been in touch with Ms Minetti and her partner, who were at times living in Uruguay, when he visited the country last year.

He has denied this, saying he was only in the country for official meetings and has instituted defamation proceedings. The journalist has also been warned by RAI.

A separate debate has now broken out about whether this constitutes an attack on freedom of the press.

In the newspaper article that broke the story of the pardon, questions were raised as to whether the assertions in her application that Ms Minetti had put her previous lifestyle behind her were true.

Her partner for the past 12 years, Giuseppe Cipriani, is a racing car driver and a member of a wealthy Italian family that owns Harry’s Bar in Venice and also restaurants and bars in hot spots in North and South America, Italy and Spain.

The couple often mix with members of the jet set. Mr Cipriani is said to be mentioned in the Epstein files, and in the past there had also been allegations of the involvement of prostitutes in the family’s nightclub in Ibiza.

There were also questions raised about the legality of the adoption of the child in Uruguay. There are allegations that the orphanage that arranged the adoption has been under investigation for years in Uruguay for corruption and breaches of the adoption laws.

Another ground relied upon in the pardon application was that the child was unwell and required medical treatment. The application mentioned treatment at an Italian hospital. When that hospital denied ever having treated the child, Miss Minetti clarified that consultations with doctors at that hospital had been “informal”.

What happens next? The Italian judge who endorsed the pardon has been asked to review it. Interpol has been asked to investigate the allegations relating to Uruguay.

Can a pardon be withdrawn? Such a thing has never happened before. Experts are leaning towards a positive answer if the foundations of the application prove to be fraudulent.

Silvana