The downfall of Italy’s most politically influential Instagram couple — in a fraud scandal over sales of sweet pandoro Christmas bread — is gripping the nation, and there have been walk-on roles for Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her deputy, Matteo Salvini.
Chiara Ferragni, once the face of Italian fashion on social media and a darling of the left, faces a potential jail term this week, over the so-called “Pandorogate” scandal. She is accused of misleading consumers in 2023 by promoting sales of luxury sugar-dusted brioches, whose inflated prices were supposed to support sick children.
Her trial began in a Milan courtroom in late November, with a verdict expected on Jan. 14. Prosecutors have requested a 20-month prison sentence. Ferragni strongly denies any wrongdoing. “Everything we have done, we have done in good faith, none of us has profited,” she told the courtroom on Nov. 25.
Her ex-husband, rapper-turned-activist Federico Lucia, known as Fedez, was not charged in the scandal, but their marriage has collapsed under public scrutiny and he has made an eye-catching lurch to engaging the political right.
Before the trial even began, the case was political. The glamorous couple had been famous for taking on progressive causes, pitting themselves against the more traditionalist Catholic mainstream. They tackled discrimination, campaigned for LGBTQ+ rights and raised funds for intensive-care units during the Covid pandemic.
As soon as the scandal broke, conservative Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was quick to single out Ferragni as the wrong kind of role model.
“The real role models … are not influencers who make loads of money promoting expensive panettoni that are supposedly for charity,” Meloni said from the stage at the 2023 Atreju gathering of Italy’s far right.
Months later, in 2024, Meloni introduced a bill — now dubbed the Ferragni law — that directly targets influencers suspected of misleading their fan base with glitzy marketing promotions. The proposed legislation is not the legal basis for Ferragni’s prosecution, which falls under existing consumer protection and fraud laws, but it was widely interpreted as a political response to the scandal bearing her name.
By contrast, Meloni’s deputy, Salvini from the League party, came to Ferragni’s defense, saying he was “shocked” by the “malice and rancor” directed at the influencer and her family.
Indeed, a bond now seems to be building between Fedez and Salvini in the aftermath of Pandoro-gate.
Once a progressive provocateur and outspoken critic of Italy’s far right, Fedez has more recently appeared alongside right-wing figures, invited League hardliner Roberto Vannacci onto his podcast and attended the youth congress of the conservative Forza Italia party. In his memoir, he even praises Salvini for being among the few public figures who checked in regularly during the difficult period following his divorce.
“He was the only one who showed me true empathy. And this despite the fact that we had very different ideas and we said all sorts about each other in the past,” he wrote.
POLITICO reached out to both Ferragni’s company Chiara Ferragni Brand and her lawyers as well as to Fedez’s PR agency for comments, but received no response.
Millennial empire
Before the courtroom drama, Ferragni, 38, and Fedez, 36, spent a decade assembling something unique in Italian public life: A millennial empire that blended fashion, entrepreneurship, activism and entertainment into a single, highly lucrative influence machine.
Ferragni, a former law student, launched the blog The Blonde Salad with her then-partner in 2009. By 2016, it had evolved into a lifestyle magazine and e-commerce platform, selling Ferragni-designed stilettos, luggage and sweatshirts with her well-known sardonic eye logo embroidered across the chest.
Luxury houses took notice. She moved from the blogsphere to the front rows of fashion weeks, securing lucrative partnerships and becoming a Harvard Business School case study.
Fedez’s path was different. He was a master “at intercepting the cultural changes in Italy,” said Francesco Oggiano, a journalist and expert in digital and political communication.
Already established as a rapper in the early 2010s, Fedez reinvented himself as a political firebrand. He publicly challenged Meloni, wrote the official song for the populist Five Star Movement in 2014 and used televised appearances at the Sanremo song contest to criticize right-wing politicians. He was loud, combative, and comfortable mixing his celebrity with activism.
When Ferragni and Fedez met in 2016, their relationship quickly became a shared brand. Their 2018 wedding was a sponsorship-saturated media event. Their home life played out as a meticulously crafted and very glitzy reality show followed by millions.
And it worked. “Italy has always been an orphan of royal couples,” Oggiano explained. The country “deluded itself that [Ferragni and Fedez] were the perfect couple” and helped build their myth by following their every move.
They threw their weight behind the Zan bill, a proposed law to protect people from violence and discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and disabilities that never saw the light of day. They also used their platform to amplify the Malika case, in support of a young woman kicked out of her home by her family for loving another woman; and raised millions for intensive-care units during the Covid pandemic.
The duo became a kind of soft-power project, offering an outlet for a millennial Italy opposed to traditional nationalist and Catholic frameworks. They weren’t politicians, but their influence rivaled that of politicians grappling with a changing media landscape.
Sugary scandal
The couple’s progressive politics made “Pandorogate” a spectacular fall from grace.
In late 2023, Ferragni partnered with confectioner Balocco to market a pink-boxed, limited-edition pandoro to support Turin’s Regina Margherita children’s hospital. The message was simple: Buy the pandoro to support cancer research.
But the arrangement was not tied to sales. As journalist Selvaggia Lucarelli first revealed, Balocco had already donated a fixed €50,000 months earlier, while Ferragni received a commercial fee for the campaign. Even the hospital initially misunderstood how the promotion worked.
Italy’s Competition Authority (AGCM) later confirmed those findings, concluding that packaging, press releases and social-media posts created the misleading impression that consumers were directly supporting the charity. In reality, no share of sales was donated, while Ferragni’s companies earned more than €1 million from the campaign.
The competition authorities fined Ferragni and Balocco more than €1 million for misleading commercial practices, and saying companies linked to Ferragni profited from the scheme. Consumer groups urged prosecutors to investigate potential fraud and to consider freezing her companies’ accounts.
By 2025, the controversy had shifted to criminal proceedings. Milan prosecutors incorporated the AGCM’s conclusions into their case, charging Ferragni with aggravated fraud for allegedly generating false expectations among buyers.
To her political enemies, Pandorogate was a case of philanthropy being treated as a marketing accessory. The attorney general stated in the decree that decided the trial would be held in Milan that Ferragni “used” charity “to strengthen her image.”
Bubble reputation
The scandal didn’t just damage the couple’s commercial brand. It also tarnished the progressive picture they created of themselves.
“Fedez was always better at controlling the narrative,” said Oggiano, which may help explain why he has managed to remain relevant in Italy’s media landscape.
After the divorce, Fedez took control of the public discourse yet again by writing an autobiography. In it, he describes how, already struggling after cancer surgery, he cycled through hospitalizations, panic attacks, heavy medication and periods of erratic behavior, finding support in unlikely places, not least Salvini.
A public repositioning followed. Fedez launched a new podcast, where he often hosts some of Italy’s most outspoken right-wing figures, from politicians to other artists and influencers. He calls it “dialogue,” while his critics call it a political shift. His audience has changed too: More male, more skeptical and increasingly drawn to a Joe Rogan-style environment that prizes unfiltered chatter over ideological clarity.
Ferragni chose silence instead. Legal troubles, reputational collapse and the withdrawal of brand partners are now pushing her largely out of public view.
Their demise removes one of the few high-visibility counterweights to a nationalist government that is now mastering digital communication.
What remains of their legacy? At a national level, when it comes to marketing campaigns, “brands are definitely more careful,” Oggiano said.
Ferragni now faces a legal battle and a steep climb back to public trust. Fedez has traded activism for opinion-driven entertainment on his podcast. Their shared brand of entrepreneurial optimism and progressive advocacy has evaporated.
She paid a heavier price than Fedez, but both careers were always built on a trade-off.
As Oggiano puts it: “You have to choose between attention and reputation. Some people choose reputation above all else, and the moment there’s even the slightest scandal, everything collapses.”
Pandorogate: Fraud scandal over Christmas cakes sinks Italy’s progressive glamour couple
Source: Viral Showbiz Pinay
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