Venezuelan police on Tuesday said there had still been no ransom request for an Italian entrepreneur kidnapped last week in Cabimas, 300 miles west of Caracas.
Investigators say Guido Mancini Calabrese, who lived in Venezuela, was taken by three or four men who boarded his 4X4 vehicle on Thursday and made him drive to his house.
The men stole money and other objects from the house before driving away with the 53-year-old Italian in his own vehicle.
Calabrese, originally from a town near Benevento in Campania, worked as a legal representative for a company operating in the petrochemicals sector.
Benevento provincial councillor Lucio Rubano on Tuesday urged the foreign ministry to put pressure on the Venezuelan government to find Calabrese.
''The Italian government must put pressure on its Venezuelan counterpart to give us hope of a happy ending to this story,'' he said.
In July a 70-year-old Italian engineer, Guglielmo Marangoni, was murdered at his home by three men who hid his body in a water cistern in the Venezuelan town of Porto Fijo.
