The scandal – dubbed “pandorogate” – started with the sale of pink special edition Christmas cakes in 2022.<\/p>\n
Consumers were led to believe that sales of the pandoro would go towards raising funds for a children’s hospital in Turin. But it turned out that the cake’s producer, Balocco, had given a one-off \u20ac50,000 (\u00a343,300) donation to the hospital before the cake’s launch.<\/p>\n
Ferragni has 28 million followers on Instagram and, after her companies made \u20ac1m from the promotion, she pledged to donate the same sum to the hospital.<\/p>\n
The outcry led authorities to initiate a formal investigation and the influencer was handed a \u20ac1m fine in 2023 by Italy’s competition authority over the pandoro cakes, branded with her name and mentioning the children’s hospital.<\/p>\n
Ferragni-branded Easter eggs also became part of the scandal, leading the influencer to agree to pay \u20ac1.2m to a children’s charity to settle complaints that the eggs’ sales allegedly misled consumers.<\/p>\n
She was later indicted on the aggravated fraud charges, along with business associate Fabio Damato. <\/p>\n
Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of one year and eight months in prison for Ferragni but the judge rejected their accusation that the fraud should be seen as aggravated.<\/p>\n
The Milan court found that no aggravation had been involved as a consumer group had withdrawn its original complaint. Ferragni had agreed with consumer organisation Codacons that she would compensate consumers and donate money to a charity for women who had suffered gender violence.<\/p>\n
“We are all moved,” Ferragni told reporters at the end of the trial. “The last two years have been very hard. I had faith in justice, and justice has been done.”<\/p>\n
Despite her acquittal the scandal has proved damaging to Ferragni’s brand and affected her personal life. Her marriage to Italian rapper Fedez fell apart last year.<\/p>\n
It has also led to tighter rules for Italian influencers to show greater transparency in their fund-raising initiatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The scandal – dubbed “pandorogate” – started with the sale of pink special edition Christmas cakes in 2022.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-696034","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115895127617534943","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}