Ransom demand for body of top Italian banker
Investigators are looking into a ransom demand for the body of Italy’s most powerful banker, which was stolen from the family tomb last week, newspapers said today.
The reports said that a letter claiming responsibility for the theft of Enrico Cuccia’s body and demanding the ransom was sent to people ‘‘close’’ to the banker in Rome.
It contained a photo of Cuccia’s coffin inside the mausoleum, which was normally closed convincing investigators to give credence to the claim, according to Corriere della Sera and La Stampa newspapers.
The prosecutor who is following the case, Fabrizio Argentieri, was not available for comment, his office said.
The reports said that the letter demanded the equivalent of ‘‘several billion lire’’ (several million pounds) in Swiss francs and gave the number of a foreign bank account.
According to the reports, investigators believe that the thieves might have crossed the border from the northern Lombardy region and be in Switzerland.
Cuccia died in June at 92. Since his body was stolen from the mausoleum on the grounds of the family villa in Meina, on the shores of Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, investigators strongly suspected an extortion attempt. But several claims of responsibility received in the past days were not considered credible.
As the founder of Mediobanca, once Italy’s only merchant bank, Cuccia served as the gatekeeper for many postwar mega-mergers and as custodian for strategic chunks of stock in the handful of major industrial groups.
