Lower House caucus leaders on Wednesday decided to postpone until February 15 the discussion of a motion tabled by the opposition calling for Culture Undersecretary Vittorio Sgarbi to be stripped of his responsibilities amid a criminal probe into alleged laundering of cultural assets and an investigation by Italy's antitrust authority to see if lavish reported earnings from various private contracts represent an activity incompatible with that of being a member of the government.
"The majority rejected our request to vote on the motion of suspension for Sgarbi," said Five Star Movement (M5S) Housecaucus leader Francesco Silvestri.
"They are hiding in the hope of a (positive) antitrust ruling and to escape political judgment," he continued.
"It is unacceptable that the Meloni government should find the time to talk about Ferragni's pandoro but not to vote on the suspension of an undersecretary who is accused of involvement in the theft of a painting, who wishes death on journalists and who unbuttons his trousers on TV," added Silvestri, referring to Sgarbi's behavior during a recent episode of investigative journalism program Report.
Last October the antitrust authority opened a probe sparked by a report from Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano to establish if the hundreds of thousands of euros reportedly earned in various gigs by the volatile 71-year-old art critic and cultural expert are incompatible with his government standing and whether the private sector works constitute possible conflicts of interest.
Separately, in early January prosecutors in Macerata said they had opened an investigation into Sgarbi for the alleged self-laundering of cultural assets in relation to a work by Baroque painter Rutiliodi Lorenzo Manetti that was stolen from Castello di Buriasco, in Piedmont, in 2013.
The undersecretary has said he is innocent.
And on Tuesday he was fined 2,000 euros for defaming former Romemayor Virginia Raggi.
Sgarbi was convicted after likening Raggi in 2018 to lateMob-linked Palermo mayor Vito Ciancimino, key figure in the 'sack of Palermo' construction scandal, over a Rome council demolition order, subsequently revoked, of a historic villa in the Art Deco Coppede' district of the Italian capital.
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