Jailed real estate tycoon Stefano Ricucci was scheduled to be questioned by prosecutors on Thursday in a high-profile investigation into alleged market-rigging.
The 43-year-old property dealer and financier was arrested on Tuesday in a probe focusing on his stake-building in RCS Mediagroup, a publishing group which owns Italy's most influential newspaper.
Ricucci, who reportedly wept as he sat in his cell on Wednesday, was due to be questioned at about 14.00 in Rome's Regina Coeli jail.
In 2005, Ricucci amassed a stake of nearly 21% in RCS. His Magiste company now holds 14% but this has been pledged to the Italian bank Banca Popolare Italiana (BPI) as collateral for an outstanding loan of 700 million euros. According to prosecutors, Ricucci sought to artificially inflate the value of his RCS stake by creating two front companies which then requested funds from two foreign banks in order to purchase RCS shares.
Prosecutors said Ricucci hoped in this way to push up the share value of RCS, sell his stake and extinguish his loan with BPI.
They justified the requested for his arrest on the grounds that he could attempt to repeat the scam or tamper with the evidence against him.
Ricucci's bid to take over RCS last summer raised concerns about the independence of Corriere della Sera, particularly when it emerged that the property dealer's advisor was Ubaldo Livolsi, a financier very close to Premier and media magnate Silvio Berlusconi.
Berlusconi has strongly denied opposition accusations that he was behind Ricucci's stake-building in RCS with the aim of gaining control of Corriere della Sera. Prosecutors were also scheduled to question two of the three other people arrested with Ricucci on Tuesday. They are are businessman Tommaso Di Lernia and former army officer Vincenzi Tavano, both of whom are accused of informing the real estate tycoon about the state of judicial enquiries involving him.
