Sunday April 1 9:38 AM ET
Top Italian Banker's Stolen Corpse Found in Barn

MILAN (Reuters) - A coffin containing the corpse of legendary Italian banker Enrico Cuccia, mysteriously snatched from his tomb two weeks ago, was found in a country barn outside Turin, police said Sunday.

A local man without a police record had been arrested and the coffin, found Saturday night, was to be replaced in Cuccia's tomb near Lago Maggiore in north Italy later Sunday.

Cuccia, honorary chairman of the secretive and powerful Milan merchant bank Mediobanca and hailed as the father of Italian capitalism, died last year aged 92.

Police said they found the coffin under a pile of hay in a deserted barn 20 miles outside Turin after capturing a 39-year-old local metalworker in the act of phoning Mediobanca's Chief Executive Vincenzo Maranghi to press for a ransom.

Police said the man, identified as Giampaolo Pesce, had admitted snatching the body and sending a ransom note demanding six million Swiss francs ($3.47 million) in return for Cuccia's body.

``I needed the money,'' he was reported to have told police, who are looking for at least two accomplices.

Police said Pesce's first mistake had been to address the ransom note to the head of Rome's water and electricity utility Acea, Paolo Cuccia, thinking he was Enrico's son although he is in fact not related to the banker.

His fingerprints matched those found on the letter.

Police said Pesce then phoned Maranghi last Friday and the banker gave him his mobile phone number and arranged a phone call for Saturday to discuss ransom terms.

Maranghi tipped off Turin police, who staked out local phone boxes and caught the would-be ransomer as he tried to telephone the Mediobanca chief executive.

``It's clear we are dealing with a bunch of local amateurs and not an organized crime network as was first surmised,'' a Turin police official said.

As founder of Mediobanca, a bank that played a key role in almost every deal in Italian corporate finance since the 1940s, Cuccia was one of the country's most powerful men.

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