He is 67 years old, fell in love with a young African girl and traveled to meet her: it all ended terribly

A 67-year-old Italian entrepreneur fell into the trap: he traveled to the Ivory Coast, in Africa, to meet an alleged girlfriend he met online. There he was kidnapped for three days and had to be rescued by the local police, in collaboration with Italian agents. Alive by a miracle, he has already returned to Italy.

Claudius Formenton has a marble processing company in Fosso, a town of 7,000 inhabitants near Venice. But one day the man, grandfather and father of a family, met an alleged marten From the web. Gossip goes, gossip arrives, in November the man agrees to travel to Abidjan, West Africa, to meet his new love in person.

Upon arrival at the airport, A taxi driver sent by Olivia is waiting for him at the terminal with a sign with his name on it, who tells him she will take him to the place where he will meet the attractive young woman. But the taxi deviates from its intended route and Claudio Formenton disappears. For three days, the Italian entrepreneur has not responded to calls and messages from friends and family, who are increasingly concerned about the situation.

Alarmed, they decide to contact the Italian police to report the disappearance of Claudio Formenton in the Ivory Coast. The Carabinieri investigative group mobilizes to solve the enigma of the entrepreneur’s absence, and through the geolocation of his cell phone manages to trace his whereabouts.

The investigators, coordinated by the prosecutor Erminio Amelio, managed to detect that he was in a hotel in the city of Bonoua, after having previously gone through a couple of hiding places. Up to the hotel room, where he was being watched by a kidnapper, the local police arrived to free him.

Stefano Marrone, lawyer of the entrepreneur Formenton, has asked that his privacy be respected, because he is only looking for rest and does not want to make statements. Even his sister, in the company, asked journalists for respect and silence: “We are a family that has always worked and earned everything with hard work and sweat”.

Formenton told police he had not been mistreated and had not paid the ransom.

Now the entrepreneur will have to explain his journey to the Italian authorities, who had to make a considerable effort to bring him back to his country.

Prosecutors are convinced that behind the alleged Olivia Martens there is a gang that has surely made other older men with money fall into their networks.

The anger of an Italian priest

Formenton had built a reputation among his compatriots 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 entrepreneur for his neighbors: everything was work, family and parish help.

Indeed, in your community, Formenton said he was on a humanitarian trip to the Ivory Coast to see a missionary friendFather Mattia Mellis, who works in the Yopougan mission, and spends a week with him.

But now, when he returned to his city, Formenton found a rarefied climate. The parish priest, Claudio Savoldo, has decided to revoke the entrepreneur’s role as ‘Minister of Communion’, according to the Venetian newspaper ‘Il Gazzettino’. “Given the revelations that have been made about him, his post in the parish will be definitively revoked,” Savoldo said.