Wednesday March 21 7:57 AM ET
Market Loser Claims to Have Banker's Corpse

MILAN (Reuters) - A man who lost a fortune on the Milan stock market said he snatched the corpse of legendary Italian banker Enrico Cuccia and would only return it when the market boomed again, ANSA news agency said Tuesday.

``You will think I am mad, but I'm not, I'm just exasperated,'' the man wrote in Italian in a letter to ANSA's Milan office.

The macabre theft of Cuccia's coffin from a small cemetery near the northern Lake Maggiore was discovered Friday.

Cuccia, who ran the powerful Milan investment bank Mediobanca for some 40 years and was considered the father of Italian capitalism, died last year at 92.

ANSA reported the man's letter as saying he did not want a ransom, but would only return Cuccia's body to his family when the Milan bourse index of blue chip stocks, the so-called Mib30, made a strong recovery to 50,000 points.

The Mib30, at around 37,880 late Tuesday, was last above 50,000 during a stock market boom in March last year.

The author of the Milan-postmarked letter, written in capital letters with a ballpoint pen, said he was ``a man who over the years has lost most of his savings in share investments on the Milan stock exchange,'' ANSA reported.

He said he had removed Cuccia's body with some friends.

The letter added that if the Milan stock market didn't show signs of a recovery by the end of the year, the man would begin ''hitting people in the world of finance and financial journalists who, like Cuccia, have contributed to my ruin.''

Police had said they were investigating possible political motives or a demand for ransom behind the theft of the body.

Lieutenant-Colonel Marco Rizzo of Milan paramilitary carabinieri said police were still keeping all options open.

``What the letter contains isn't completely absurd or false -- it's one hypothesis to take into consideration,'' he told Reuters Tuesday, adding the letter would be checked for fingerprints.

A Mediobanca official said Tuesday the bank, which had its switchboard working over the weekend, had not received any phone calls relating to the disappearance of Cuccia's body.

Police said they were examining two other claims for the body-snatching by people claiming to represent groups of unemployed.

Other possible motives for the theft cited in newspapers include Satanic rituals or an attack by the Mafia, which has raided tombs for ransom in the past.

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