Hungarian beauty queen Greta Gila is suing the Italian Government for €100,000 after she was wrongly arrested for trafficking drugs and spent 74 days in prison.
The 24-year-old was arrested in a hotel in Fiumicino, outside Rome in 2019. Ms Gila was travelling from London to Tokyo when she stopped off in Rome to change flights.
She was hired for a modelling shoot but did not know that the photoshoot was fake and a ploy to traffic drugs.
A woman who was acting as costume designer for the photoshoot had been caught with almost 11 kilos of cocaine in her baggage in Brazil.
Greta Gila
Ms Gila was living in London at the time and was hired by a modelling agency.
The modelling agency promised €1,500 for the trip which was considered suspiciously high by Italian authorities.
She said the man who was supposed to introduce her to the designer had appeared nervous and at a certain point had told her to go to her bedroom in their hotel near Rome airport.
Ms Gila denied knowing anything about the trafficked drugs when police broke into her hotel room.
Investigators had organised a controlled delivery of the drugs, finding Gila rather than her male contact when they arrived at the hotel.
She spent two months in prison in Civitavecchia and was forced to also take a obligatory residence in Rome for six months.
Greta Gila's parents had to hire a Hungarian speaking lawyer to find her.
“He listened to me and believed me. He noticed certain mistakes that had been made in the investigation, and he got me out of prison,” Gila told the newspaper Corriere della Sera.
After studying the evidence a prosecutor withdrew the charges, saying they were unfounded despite a lengthy investigation.
Gila’s compensation claim will be heard by a Rome appeal court on February 22.
