Milan Skyscraper Crash 'Accident or Suicide,' Italian Police Say

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, April 21, 2002

Milan Skyscraper Crash 'Accident or Suicide,' Italian Police Say

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The pilot who crashed his plane intoMilan's Pirelli building late on Thursday afternoon may have committed suicide out of desperation after falling victim to a financial scam, Milan police said on Saturday.

Swiss citizen Luigi Fasulo, 67, who died in the crash along with two women lawyers working in the Pirelli skyscraper, "was a desperate man," Milan Flying Squad deputy commander Giuseppe De Angelis told reporters on Saturday.

De Angelis said police were working on the assumption that "an accident and suicide are equally valid as hypotheses." "Only the technical investigation will tell us the truth," he said.

Police sources confirmed they had been on the trail of an international organisation which had stolen and "cloned" cheques. One of its victims was Fasulo, who was said to have been swindled out of 1.75 million euros by a gang including a Milanese man who was arrested by French police in Nice on Friday, Sergio Landonio.

The investigation was opened after the arrest in Milan last December of a Lebanese citizen found in possession of counterfeit cheques worth about a billion lire, drawn on a current account in the name of a wealthy New York citizen, police said.

Police confirmed that Fasulo and one of his sons called the police station in Como north of Milan on Thursday morning and thatthe son later called back to say he had received "more threats."

Police also confirmed that on the afternoon of the crash, at about 17:00, Fasulo's wife telephoned Swiss police because she wasworried that her husband had not come home after going to Como that morning to tell police about the fraud he had suffered.

Landonio, 63, an Italian with a criminal record, was arrested in Nice on Friday morning on suspicion of fraud and money laundering, police said.

He is suspected of setting up the scam which targeted Fasulo, obtaining about two billion lire for two cheques, police said.

The cheques were taken out of a bank in Innsbruck by three Russians in Landonio's employment and exchanged for a savings bookwhich proved to contain only 100 euros instead of the agreed sum of 1.75 million euros.

Police have obtained wiretap evidence in which Landonio is heard referring to his elderly Italo-Swiss victim as extremely wealthy.

The plane, a single-engine, four-seater Piper Commander 112, crashed into the 26th floor of the 30-storey Pirelli skyscraper inbright sunshine at about 17:50 local time on Thursday, killing Fasulo and the two lawyers and injuring 34 people.

The 127-metre-tall landmark, one of Milan's few skyscrapers, houses the regional government and the crash briefly triggered fears of a terrorist attack.

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