Antitrust Office closes investigation: €1.2 million from Chiara Ferragni in the case of “designer” eggs

The press release from Chiara Ferragni’s companies concerns a case related to the Easter Eggs-Giochi Preziosi case, “which the antitrust authority – explains the entrepreneur – closed by accepting the commitments that Tbs Crew and Fenice had been working on in recent months”. The Competition and Market Authority has concluded an investigation initiated last January into the dissemination of commercial communications advertising “Ferragni branded” eggs for Easter 2021 and 2022. The sale was linked to the charitable initiative in favor of the social enterprise “I Bambini delle Fate”. As part of the investigation, the Office intended to verify whether this information could lead consumers to believe that by buying Ferragni eggs they would contribute financially to the social enterprise.

Now, the influencer’s companies will pay 1.2 million euros to the Fairy Children, while 100 thousand will be paid by the company producing the dessert and owner of the “Dolci Preziosi” brand, Cerealitalia. A payment that – as Chiara Ferragni emphasized in an Instagram story – “consists of a voluntary economic contribution, which is therefore a donation and not a sanction”. For the Antimonopoly Office, all the companies involved in the proceedings presented commitments that were positively assessed and became binding on them. In addition to the commitments regarding financial decentralization, they committed to a clear and permanent separation of commercial activities from charitable activities.

Ferragni says in his video that his companies “will then make a commitment that is particularly important to me, which is to completely separate commercial activities from charitable activities, which in any case – he assures us – we will not stop doing.”

«The transparency operation that Codacons launched in 2020 to protect citizens from non-transparent or fraudulent charitable operations has been a success – comments Carlo Rienzi, CEO of Codacons -. We believe that the decision by Antitrust to replace sanctions with donations to those most in need is right, but the most important thing is that the absurd combination of charity and product sales will finally be stopped.»

(Unioneonline/ss)