Italy’s presidency has taken the extraordinary step of writing to the Justice Ministry to investigate allegations that the humanitarian pardon granted to bunga bunga-era figure Nicole Minetti was based on fabricated information. A child, a disappeared mother, and a lawyer found burned in her car are all now part of the story.
When President Sergio Mattarella signed the clemency decree for Nicole Minetti on 18 February 2026, the humanitarian grounds appeared clear: a gravely ill child in urgent need of care. On Monday, the Quirinale took the highly unusual step of writing to the Justice Ministry to demand urgent verification of press reports alleging that those grounds were false. The pardon is now under a cloud.
The letter from the Quirinale’s press office stated, “With reference to the decree granting clemency to Ms Minetti, adopted by the President of the Republic, upon favourable proposal from the Minister of Justice, on February 18, 2026, and to the resulting press reports regarding the alleged falsity of the information presented in the clemency request, at the President’s direction, I request that you kindly and urgently acquire the necessary information to verify the validity of the press report.”
The Ministry of Justice responded within the hour. It announced it had opened an internal inquiry and stated that initial findings could be expected within 24 hours. The ministry added, however, that the documents held on file from the pardoning procedure did not appear to contain the elements described in the press reports.
Minetti, for her part, described the newspaper’s reporting as “false and damaging to my personal and family reputation”. Further, she announced her intention to file a complaint against the paper.
Who is Nicole Minetti?
For many Italians, the name Nicole Minetti is inseparable from the turbulent final chapter of the Berlusconi era. Born in 1986 to a British father and Italian mother, she trained as a dental hygienist. She met Silvio Berlusconi when she treated him after a facial injury. In 2010, she was elected as a regional councillor in Lombardy at just 25 years old. She ran on President Roberto Formigoni’s ticket in a candidacy said at the time to have been strongly supported by Berlusconi himself.
Her fall came through two separate criminal proceedings. She received a definitive sentence of two years and ten months for inducing prostitution in the Ruby bis trial, concerning the so-called “elegant dinners” at Berlusconi’s Arcore villa. She also received a further sentence of one year and one month for embezzlement in the Rimborsopoli case. This concerned the illicit use of Lombardy regional councillors’ expense accounts.
Both sentences were definitively confirmed by the Court of Cassation. The pardon, recommended by Justice Minister Carlo Nordio and signed by Mattarella, was granted in February. However, it only became public knowledge on 10 April, when the RAI programme Mi Manda Rai Tre broke the news. The Quirinale subsequently confirmed that the clemency had been granted in part due to “the serious health conditions of a close family member of Minetti, a minor, who requires special care and treatment at highly specialised hospitals.”
The child at the centre
It is the child who has brought the entire edifice into question. According to Il Fatto Quotidiano, which has led the investigation, the clemency application described the child as having been abandoned at birth and as having no living family. The newspaper, however, having consulted documents from the Tribunal of Maldonado in Uruguay, found that the child’s biological parents were alive, albeit poor.
The child, a boy born in 2017, was reportedly placed temporarily in the care of Uruguay’s Instituto del Niño y Adolescente (INAU) because his mother was impoverished and his father was in detention. Minetti and her partner, Italian businessman Giuseppe Cipriani, are said to have relocated to Uruguay and begun donating money to the INAU, subsequently making contact with children in its care. In 2021, they reportedly brought the boy to the United States for medical treatment before they had legally adopted him. This action has raised questions about how this was possible.
The newspaper also raised doubts about the medical evidence submitted in the clemency application — specifically, whether the child’s condition was accurately represented and whether the tests that led the presiding judge to support the pardon were conducted properly.
A darker turn
The reporting in Il Fatto has also illuminated a series of disturbing peripheral events. After Minetti reportedly sued the biological parents in order to obtain legal custody of the child, the boy’s biological mother vanished from contact in February 2026. This was four days after the newspaper published its first article on the case. The lawyer who had been representing the biological mother subsequently died, burned to death in her car. Italian investigative authorities are understood to be aware of both developments.
An earlier Il Fatto report, published on Saturday 25 April, offered additional context on Minetti’s life in Uruguay. The newspaper described alleged evenings of paid sex at the villa and yacht of her partner Giuseppe Cipriani in Maldonado. There were further claims that visits from the late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and British model Naomi Campbell had also taken place. Minetti, the paper alleged, “chose the girls, the clothes, and the hairdresser.” These allegations remain unproven and contested.
How was the Minetti pardon endorsed?
The Milan Court of Appeal prosecutor who had reviewed and endorsed the pardon application before it reached the Quirinale sought to defend the process. Deputy Prosecutor Gaetano Brusa told ANSA, “We acquired the data and carried out the investigations requested by the ministry. The procedure regarding the pardon request arrived from the ministry at the end of 2025. Based on the requests, the picture was complete and no anomalous data emerged. The documentation was acquired through medical checks by the Carabinieri.”
Brusa nonetheless confirmed that his office was now seeking authorisation to go further. “We have submitted the request, as the Attorney General’s Office, and are awaiting authorisation from the Ministry of Justice to conduct further investigations based on what is emerging,” he said. Judicial sources confirmed that those investigations would extend abroad, principally to Uruguay.
The Justice Ministry has said it expects to have initial findings by Tuesday 28 April.
Also read: Berlusconi fixer Dell’Utri facing trial over undeclared millions
