The scandal surrounding the Nicole Minetti pardon deepens with Interpol now involved in the investigation. Key hospitals deny any knowledge of the child cited as the humanitarian grounds for clemency.
The investigation into whether Nicole Minetti obtained a presidential pardon through false declarations has escalated with Italian authorities now involving Interpol. Gaetano Brusa, a prosecutor with the Milan Court of Appeal, confirmed the development on Tuesday. Brusa said, “We are already working on investigations, involving both our own police forces and Interpol, as a matter of urgency. We will continue until we find all the necessary information, whether positive or negative.”
Brusa set out the scope of the inquiry in full. “We will also repeat investigations in Italy to verify the authenticity of health documents and other matters. All circumstances are being investigated: from the adoption procedures abroad to the death of the child’s biological mother’s lawyer. If we encounter any obstacles, we will take the next step with a letter rogatory.”
The investigation has been authorised by the Justice Ministry, which on Monday had simultaneously insisted that none of the “negative elements” reported by Il Fatto Quotidiano featured in the documents held on the pardon request. Nonetheless, it granted prosecutors the green light to look further.
Hospitals say they never treated the boy
The most damaging developments of the day came not from prosecutors but from hospitals. A doctor at a Padua University hospital, who according to media reports was mentioned in the procedure used to obtain the pardon, stated through the hospital’s press office that he had never had any contact with Minetti. He also stated he had never treated the child at the centre of the case. There is also no trace of the boy in the Milanese hospital San Raffaele database. However, San Raffaele was another facility cited in the case papers.
The credibility of the medical documentation underpinning the entire humanitarian case for clemency is now in serious doubt.
Further, and perhaps most critically, Corriere della Sera reported on Tuesday that the nine-year-old boy had in fact recovered following an operation carried out in Boston in 2021. He is allegedly no longer in need of the continuous specialist care that his condition was said to require. If accurate, the central pillar of Minetti’s clemency application — that she was needed at the side of a gravely ill child — had already ceased to apply years before the pardon was sought.
Meloni say Nordio will not resign
Premier Giorgia Meloni, speaking to the press on Tuesday, took a carefully calibrated position. She said there had been nothing formally incorrect in the procedure for granting Minetti’s pardon, but then added that “other elements have emerged.” She confirmed Justice Minister Carlo Nordio would not be resigning, despite sustained opposition pressure. “I spoke with the minister yesterday and began reconstructing the process,” she said. “I rule out the resignation of Minister Nordio.”
The Democratic Party’s justice spokesperson Debora Serracchiani had demanded to know what Meloni was waiting for to force Nordio out. She argued his tenure had proved “extremely damaging” and that the ministry appeared to lack leadership and control.
Milan’s chief prosecutor Francesca Nanni also defended her office’s original conduct while leaving the door open to a reversal of its positive opinion. “We acted on the basis of the ministry’s mandate, a standard mandate activated in such cases,” she said. “We know what to do, and we conducted the investigations. The ministry deemed them adequate for its opinion, and the Presidency of the Republic deemed them sufficient. Now, it’s in everyone’s interest to clarify the reported facts.” She confirmed that the new investigation could lead to the prosecutor’s office reversing its recommendation.
Minetti denies any wrongdoing
Minetti herself mounted her most sustained public defence yet on Tuesday, issuing a series of flat denials of the reports circulating about her. She said the boy’s adoption process had complied fully with the law, that she had never met the child’s biological parents, and that she had never had any legal disputes with them. All of this directly contradicts Corriere della Sera‘s report that she and her partner, businessman Giuseppe Cipriani, are currently fighting the Uruguayan biological parents through the courts to obtain definitive custody and have them declared unfit.
She confirmed that the boy had undergone a “delicate” medical procedure in Boston, without addressing the suggestion that he has since made a full recovery. Minetti also denied ever having been investigated, in Uruguay or in Spain, and condemned what she described as undue media exposure of her son. She said she trusted Justice Minister Nordio to handle her case properly, and has threatened legal action against anyone repeating what she calls groundless allegations.
