Banker's body found in hayloft

The stolen body of the man who was Italy’s most powerful banker was found in a hayloft a few hours after the arrest of a steelworker trying to collect a multi-million pound ransom from bank officials.

The body of Enrico Cuccia was found to be missing from the family tomb near Lake Maggiore on March 20, and a few days later, a letter was sent reportedly demanding a ransom of £2.4m to be paid to a foreign bank account.

Turin Police Chief Nicola Calvaliere said steelworker Giampaolo Pesce, 39, had been arrested.

The coffin with the body inside was recovered overnight and police were looking for accomplices.

One report said the coffin, wrapped in red drapery, had been hidden in a hayloft on a mountainside 20 miles from Turin, in northwestern Italy.

The suspect was arrested while making a call from a rural phone box to an official of Mediobanca, the merchant bank that Cuccia ran for decades and which brokered most of Italy’s major business deals since after the Second World War.

Cuccia, founder of Mediobanca, died last June, aged 92.