For her he flew to Africa.
And also for her ended up in the hands of a band of kidnappers, as soon as he landed at the Airport of Abiyan, in Côte d’Ivoire.
The young Olivia Martens, who fell in love with social networks, probably does not even exist.
The story that investigates the Prosecutor’s Office of Rome began two months ago and has as a protagonist Claudio Formenton, 64, in front of a group specialized in marble and granite processing based in Fossò, in Veneto.
On November 27 he took a week of vacation and explained to his family that he was going to travel to Ivory Coast to collaborate with the Volunteers of the Missionary Community of Villeregia.
Nothing strange for a businessman known for the generosity of him and the commitment of him with the Catholic world.
As soon as he landed, he found a taxi driver who was waiting for him with a poster with his name written: Formenton.
He taught that he was a collaborator of the missionaries who had come to look for him and climbed into the car: this began the kidnapping of him.
For three days the kidnappers were moving it from one lair to another until they hid it at a Bonoua hotel, a location further east and more than the great coastal city of Abiyan.
That is where, after a raid, the local police broke and rescued him.
Already in Italy, the Prosecutor’s Office of Rome has opened an investigation that now seems to have reached a turning point.
Formenton’s testimony took a story a little different from that of the rich Western businessman who becomes a missionary to help Africans.
Or at least, that would not have been the only reason that had led him to travel to Ivory Coast.
As he has been knowing, the man met by social networks to a Tal Olivia Martens, a marble girl with whom he spoke from last autumn.
In those chats, she talked to himself, but also about the difficulties she faced to pay a lawyers she needed to overcome some legal problems.
Formenton never sent him money, but he was fascinated at the idea of being able to meet Africa taking advantage of the collaboration with the missionaries.
The kidnapping would therefore be the result of a real trap, and the researchers doubt a lot that the young marphileña really exists.
The researchers, furthermore, that the Venetian businessman would not be the only victim of the mysterious Olivia Martens: his name would have appeared in the chats of other wealthy Italian businessmen.
