Chiara Ferragni could risk more than losing thousands of followers on social media. We are talking about criminal consequences. Why? The Milan public prosecutor's office, which is dealing with the Balocco case, is examining the hypothesis, reconstructed in detail by La Stampa, that the influencer may have played an operational role in the scandal.
Financial investigations
In the Turin newspaper we actually read that two Ferragni companies “Together with Balocco, they laid out the strategy that led consumers to think wrong that they had also served a good cause by purchasing the pink Christmas decorations from Pandoro for Christmas 2022.” This emerges from the documents compiled by the Guardia di Finanza on behalf of the deputy public prosecutor of Milan, Eugenio Fusco, who is the responsible one Department deals with fraud in trade.
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The role of the Ferragni company
According to the Antitrust Office (which on December 14 fined two of the digital entrepreneur's companies over 1 million euros), Fenice Srl, one of the two Ferragni companies in question, “significantly imposed” Balocco's line in order to comply with it: both in communication and in operations. And that is why the hand of Fenice srl was behind the press release linking the sale of the Pandoro to the donation to the Turin Hospital. A donation which, as is now known, had been made months earlier for 50,000 euros.
What the influencer risks
Tbs Crew srl, the company that manages Ferragni's social media, suggested that Ferragni was directly involved in the charity project. Based on these premises, Fusco (Deputy Prosecutor of Milan) could also reject the crime of commercial fraud against Chiara Ferragni, a crime that concerns the quality of a product offered for sale.
The prosecutors who are investigating
The Trent judges also opened a file on the Rosa Pandoro affair. The chain reaction that began in the Italian prosecutor's office continues in the case surrounding Balocco's Christmas cake designed by Chiara Ferragni. The investigators in the capital of Trentino as well as in Cuneo and Prato are currently not assuming any crimes, while the prosecutors in Milan – where there are no suspects so far anyway – have already delegated the investigation to the financial police last December 19th and it can't It can be ruled out that an investigation into commercial fraud will be initiated in the next few days. The procedure, which could be followed by new proceedings in other public prosecutor's offices, was initiated following the lawsuit filed by Codacons and 101 other judicial authorities, accusing the crime of serious fraud to the detriment of consumers. The story is about the purchase of the Pandoro Pink Christmas in 2022, which would have contributed to a donation in favor of the Regina Margherita Hospital in Turin. A charitable action that, in fact, has already been carried out by Balocco, a company that manufactured the Pandoro, which was put up for sale last year at a price well above the market price: in the complaint, the consumer association recalls that by purchasing “ could make a contribution to the donation and that Ms. Ferragni took part in the initiative, a circumstance that turned out to be untrue.”
The Milan judges are therefore the ones who are currently in the most advanced phase of the exploratory investigation. The Milan Economic and Financial Police confiscates the documents collected by the antitrust authorities in this case without presenting an order. The competition authority, which imposed a maximum fine of over one million euros, actually collected a lot of material for the investigation and the takeover by the Gdf will therefore take several more days. All the documentation, which constitutes an extensive file, is then examined by the Fiamme Gialle, which prepares a report that is submitted to the public prosecutor's office. The activity of the Milan prosecutors also affects the Easter eggs chapter of Dolci Preziosi.
The Bari-based company, which has made it clear in recent days that it has no responsibility in the matter, had paid Ferragni a fee of 500,000 euros in 2021 and 700,000 euros in 2022, in return for a donation of the same The company independently contributed 36,000 euros to the “I bambini delle Fatè” association. However, in this second case, the price of Easter eggs was not increased, as was the case with pink Pandoros. However, on social media, the irony and the attack of thousands of users against Chiara Ferragni has continued for about ten days, with memes and posts. So much so that the influencer herself, after she had already apologized for the Pink Christmas case on her profile, did not leave the house for several days until December 24th and closed herself in silence. His last appearance on Instagram after the panettone case exploded was a video in which he admitted to “a communication error,” which was viewed by over forty million people.
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on Il Messaggero