Venice flies to Africa for a girl and is kidnapped. The parish priest: “He was distributing communion, I’ll take away the job”
A Venetian businessman kidnapped in Africa, where he had gone to meet only a girl he met on the web, did not fall into a trap and was kidnapped for a few days and then released thanks to the intervention of the Italian carabinieri del Ros and the special forces of the Ivory Coast, but must also immediately ethical consequences in the parish. Claudio Formenton, an entrepreneur, 67, was in fact “minister for the distribution of Communion”, That is, the particles in the church or distributed in homes to bring them to the sick.
After the story of the kidnapping became public, the parish priest don Claudio Savoldo he has made it known that he will revoke this. And he told local newspapers: “Some rumors about him had already arrived in the past, but I had not taken that job away from him because in the meantime Covid had arrived. In the light of these revelations thehis position will be removed definitively“. The small town of Riviera del Brenta he is shaken by the incident that led to the opening of an investigation by the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Formenton, who is a father and grandfather, had established a network bond with a woman from the Ivory Coast. Evidently he had fallen in love with it, not realizing that he would end up in a scam that could have very serious consequences for him. In fact, that was nothing more than a lure, a decoy that would have already collected a long series of prey. The entrepreneur, who works in the sector of marble, he decided to leave for Africa, stating that he would visit a missionary, father Mattia Mellis, to spend a few days in its center of religious and charitable activities. The missionary community Villaregia, in the province of Rovigo, who manages the mission from Italy, however, explained that that trip had not been agreed with the structure. The organization is present on the outskirts of the economic capital of the Ivory Coast, Abidjan, in the diocese of Yopougon.
The fact dates back to a couple of months ago, but only now has something been known about it, after the opening of the investigation by the Prosecutor of Rome, competent for crimes committed abroad to the detriment of compatriots. Formenton had to reconstruct what happened with the prosecutor Erminio Amelio. He thus had to meet up with Olivia Martens, a woman of twenty, whom he had never seen. Postal Police officers call them “sentimental scams” with the construction of fake profiles. They involve both sexes, but the African variant was a little different. Formenton took the plane and reached Abidjan. At the airport he was approached by a taxi driver with a paper bearing his name, but he did not take him to the requested location, but to a cabin in the forest. In three days he changed prison a couple more times, eventually ending up in a hotel. He was treated well and there was no need to pay redemptions. Thanks to the timeliness of the investigations by the carabinieri, in contact with the African special services, it was possible to identify where he is and free him. The lawyer Stefano Marrone, who assists Formenton said: “He asks for his privacy to be respected, he has already reported to the judicial authorities and will not give interviews”.