She was involved in a scandal involving a drug called Cronassial, a pharmaceutical industry called Fidia and the Nobel committee. Through various donations, Fidia (at the time a small pharmaceutical company) used the scientist from 1975 onwards to market a new panacea drug called Cronassial (which was banned in the Nineties across Europe as it was linked to Guillain-Barré syndrome and possibly because of the human spongiform encephalopathy scare). The drug was approved thanks to the corrupt hand of Duilio Poggiolini (with the ministry of health) who was finally arrested in 1993. Fidia's "collaboration" with the scientist culminated in 1986 with the Nobel prize, for which Fidia seems to have corrupted at least one of the committee members with 8 million dollars [1], fact that came out during the Italian corruption trials in the first part of the Nineties.

It seems that Fidia's revenue jumped a 1000 folds thanks to Cronassial, apparently from 600 million Lire to 420 billion, with the drug representing 82% of the revenue, but I wasn't able to find a source for that.

It's quite unfortunate Levi-Montalcini never came clean of this scandal, refusing to comment on anything related to Cronassial and claiming ignorance of the facts.

Disappointing as all this might be, NGF is a great discovery which is well worth a Nobel prize and she seems to have been a very good scientist too.

1) Nilsson M. Nobel committee refutes allegations of corruption. Lancet 1995; 346: 763-4.