Italian prince arrested for links to criminals

The 69-year-old prince, son of King Umberto II, was arrested on the order of a magistrate in Potenza, southern Italy, on suspicion of "conspiracy to commit corruption, forgery" and involvement in organising prostitution, the agency said.

He is being held in connection with inquiries into a traffic in slot machines and the "recruitment" of prostitutes for a casino in Campione d'Italia, an Italian enclave in the south of Switzerland, Ansa said.

"I am stunned," Emmanuel Filiberto, Victor Emmanuel's son, told Italian television, talking of "yet another publicity stunt".

"I hope (the prosecutor) is sure of his charges, or it will be the last time he does anything," said Filiberto, who is married to French actress Clotilde Courau.

"They took him, they removed his mobile phone and are in the process of taking him to Potenza. They treated him like a bandit. You don't treat a man of 70 with health problems like that."

Victor Emmanuel of Savoy made an official return to Italy in March 2003, after 56 years of exile imposed on the family of his grandfather King Victor Emmanuel III, who ruled from 1900 to 1946 and died in 1947, for its support of the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini.

The constitutional ban on a return to Italy by male heirs of the kingdom of Savoy was lifted in July 2002 by the national parliament.

Victor Emmanuel, whose father Umberto II reigned briefly as Italy's last king in 1946, was detained near Lake Como in northern Italy, close to the Swiss border. Twelve other people were detained or placed under house arrest, among them Salvatore Sottile, the spokesman of former foreign minister Gianfranco Fini.

Also held were three casino managers from Messina in Sicily and the mayor of Campione.

The prosecutor in Potenza, Henry John Woodcock, has made no comment but the magistrate responsible for confirming the arrest warrants, Alberto Iannuzzi, said the inquiry had been "delicate" and lasted more than two years.

"The 2,000 or so pages of the arrest warrant that I signed after carefully evaluating the facts given to me by the prosecutor speak for themselves," he said answering Filiberto's "publicity stunt" charge.