Italy’s “Influencer Venus” is on a virtual detox — at exactly the improper second.

A Court docket of Audit in Italy is accusing the federal government’s Ministry of Tourism of losing public cash with a pricey promotional marketing campaign, which all of sudden stopped posting on-line on the peak of vacationer season.

The “Open to Meraviglia” advertising marketing campaign, which price just about €140,000 in taxpayer cash, reworked Botticelli’s Venus right into a twenty first century influencer, who frequently posted on her Instagram account to advertise tourism in Italy.

However the Influencer Venus was once ultimate noticed energetic on social media on June 27, greater than two months in the past, in an image posing in entrance of a view of Taormina in Sicily.

Her accounts on different social media websites equivalent to Fb and X (previously referred to as Twitter) disappeared, Italian media reported, in conjunction with the promotional video posted on YouTube when the marketing campaign was once introduced.

The disappearance sparked questions from Pio Silvestri, who leads the Prosecutor’s Place of work of the Court docket of Audit within the Lazio area.

He began an investigation into the pricey tourism undertaking.

Requested concerning the marketing campaign going AWOL, Tourism Minister Daniela Santanchè — from Top Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy birthday celebration — reportedly informed L. a. Repubblica on the finish of August that the disappearance was once no longer a freelance downside, however a “planned selection.”

Santanchè stated that Influencer Venus will “come again quickly.”