Thursday, March 28

The businessman kidnapped while traveling to Africa by a young woman, ‘excommunicated’ by his parish priest


Correspondent in Rome

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A Claudio Formenton, 67 years old, father of a family and grandfather, a successful businessman, a trip to Africa has been very expensive economically and socially, which he planned as an affair with a young woman from the Ivory Coast and ended in a kidnapping by a group of bandits for three days , being rescued by the Ivorian forces of order.

Formenton has a marble processing company in Fossò, a town of 7,000 inhabitants, 34 kilometers from Venice. Among his countrymen he had earned a reputation as a serious industrialist, with a constant and generous social commitment, which led the parish priest to appoint him extraordinary minister to distribute Holy Communion. In short, he was a model businessman for his countrymen: it was all work, family and parish help.

But now, when returning to his village, Claudio has found a rarefied climate. The parish priest, Claudio Savoldo, has decided to revoke the businessman’s role as ‘Minister of Communion’, according to the Venetian newspaper ‘Il Gazzettino’. “In view of the revelations that have been made about him, his position in the parish will be definitively revoked”, declared the parish priest, Don Claudio Savoldo.

Kidnapping

The surprising story to which the priest refers is the talk of the people and of all Italy, because almost all the national media have echoed the news. Claudio Formenton decided in November to travel to Ivory Coast, to meet a young woman in her twenties, Olivia Martens, which he had met through the internet. I had only seen it online. Researchers assume that the young woman does not even exist. It would be an assumed name. Officially, in your company, family and friends Formenton said he was on a humanitarian trip to Ivory Coast, to see a missionary friend, Father Mattia Mellis, who works at the Yopougan mission, and spend a week with him. When he arrived at the Abidjan airport, a driver was waiting for him with a sign with his name written on it.

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That welcome had been prepared by the so-called Olivia Martens, who acted as bait for Formenton to fall into the trap. The car did not take an unexpected path to an isolated tent in a forest. He soon realized that he had fallen into a trap. There he spent the first night, guarded by three people.

By not showing signs of life, after almost two days, his family notified the Italian police. Thus came into action the magistracy and the Special Task Force (Ros) of the Carabinieri Weapon.

The investigators, coordinated by the prosecutor Erminio Amelio, managed to detect, through his mobile phone, that he was in a hotel in the city of Bonoua, after having previously passed through a couple of hideouts. Up to the hotel room, where he was being watched by a kidnapper, local forces of order came to free him.

The family asks for silence

Stefano Marrone, lawyer for businessman Formenton has asked that his privacy be respected, because he is only seeking rest and does not wish to make statements. His sister, in the company, has also asked journalists for respect and silence: “We,” he said, “are a family that has always worked and has earned everything with fatigue and sweat.”

As there is a complaint and the special police force intervenes, the magistrate’s investigation remains open. Formenton has stated to the police that did not suffer abuse and did not pay ransom. Investigators are convinced that behind the alleged Olivia Martens there is a gang that has surely made other older men with money fall for their networks. Claudio Formenton’s sad adventure teaches: traveling to another part of the world to find the young woman of dreams imagined on the internet through photos and chats, fate is usually a trap with unsuspected repercussions. Claudio Formenton has to give an account to justice, to the family and to the parish community. And on top of that, the ‘excommunication’ of Don Claudio Savoldo, his parish priest, has already cost him.

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