Italy’s far-right leader Georgia Meloni has revealed that she has not had contact with her father in decades, after it was found that he was convicted of drug smuggling and sentenced to nine years in a Spanish prison.
A Meloni spokesman said:TelegraphBritain’s next prime minister said she “stopped seeing her father when she was 11 and no longer has contact with him”.
He added that since then she “has no idea what he might have done and doesn’t think she can be held responsible for the actions of a man who chose not to see her since she was a child.”
Francesco was arrested in 1995 in Spain after trying to smuggle 1,500 kilograms of cannabis from Morocco to Italy, and a Mallorca court sentenced him to nine years in prison in 1996.
Meloni’s father died of leukemia a few years ago, as she had stated in an interview with Italian radio that she “felt almost nothing after learning of his death”.
In another interview Meloni mentioned that her father abandoned his family when she was only one year old: “He lived in the Canary Islands and we used to go there to visit him for a week or two a year.”
Meloni, head of the Fratelli d’Italia party, which won this month’s Italian elections, announced that she intends to form the next Italian government, becoming Italy’s first female prime minister.
Meloni’s 45-year-old Fratelli d’Italia party won nearly a quarter of the vote in the election.
Meloni was born in Rome on January 15, 1977 and became active in the ranks of the ultra-right wing, while working as a babysitter and waitress.
In 2008, she was appointed Minister of Youth in Silvio Berlusconi’s government. This was her only ministerial experience.