Italy’s culture minister resigns over affair with influencer

Maria Rosaria Boccia claims relationship with Gennaro Sangiuliano gave her access to classified information about forthcoming G7 summit

Italy’s culture minister resigned on Friday, two days after confessing on prime-time television that he had had an affair with a younger woman.
Gennaro Sangiuliano announced that he was stepping down from his post after appearing on national television on Wednesday to offer a tearful apology to his wife and to Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister, for the embarrassment he had caused.
He is the first minister to resign from Ms Meloni’s coalition government since it came to power nearly two years ago. In a letter to the prime minister, he said: “I deem it necessary for the institutions and for myself to hand in my resignation.”
In a saga that has transfixed Italy all week, the 62-year-old admitted to having had a relationship with Maria Rosaria Boccia, 41, an influencer and fashion entrepreneur from the town of Pompeii, near Naples.
She said that he had hired her as a grand events organiser and that she had been privy to classified information about a forthcoming G7 summit for culture ministers, prompting concern from opposition parties that the security of the event could have been compromised.
Mr Sangiuliano denied the claims, saying she had no paid role and had only been privy to “marginal” details about the summit. But in a lengthy interview on Friday, she doubled down on the claims.
“I had access to the entire organisation of the G7 meeting,” she told La Stampa newspaper.
Ms Boccia said she had seen classified information about where G7 ministers would go and what they would do during the event, which is due to be held in Campania, the southern region that includes Naples and the ancient Roman ruins of Pompeii.
She said that she had kept intimate messages that she and Mr Sangiuliano exchanged. The communication featured not just “love hearts and a few emoticons” but “messages that are hotter”.
Ms Boccia retained all the phone messages and other correspondence with the minister because, she said, he had told her in July: “I’m the minister, I’m a man, I represent the institutions of state, and no one will believe what you will say.”
She claimed that the minister was open to “blackmail” by tabloid gossip magazines as a result of their affair.
Mr Sangiuliano’s lawyer on Friday dismissed that, saying that there “no evidence that the minister has been blackmailed”.
The minister’s decision to resign came amid reports that the State Auditor was evaluating the case and considering opening an investigation into whether Ms Boccia had received any taxpayers’ money, despite having no official government role.
The case had evoked comparisons with past sex scandals in Italian politics, most notably the “bunga bunga” sex parties that Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister, hosted at his various residences, featuring escorts, models and aspiring weather girls.
Opposition MPs had been calling for the minister’s resignation all week, saying his position was no longer tenable.
Carolina Morace, an MEP with the Five Star Movement, said: “The case has made news around the world and Italy once again is being made a laughingstock.”
The saga had become “an indecorous circus”, said Matteo Renzi, a former prime minister and the leader of a small centrist party, Italia Viva.
In an apparent attempt to draw a line under the scandal, Ms Meloni immediately appointed a new culture minister, Alessandro Giuli, the head of the MAXXI contemporary arts museum in Rome.
The resignation of Mr Sangiuliano is unlikely to have much impact on the government, which is performing well in opinion polls and faces a fractured opposition.