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UniCredit officials probed for helping businessman linked to Mafia - document

The headquarters of UniCredit, Italy's biggest bank by assets, is pictured in downtown Milan, February 17, 2015. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini

FLORENCE/MILAN (Reuters) - Anti-mafia prosecutors in Florence have placed three top officials at leading Italian bank UniCredit under investigation for allegedly doing business with an entrepreneur linked to the Sicilian mafia, according to a search warrant issued by the prosecutors. The search warrant, which spelled out the investigation and was seen by Reuters, claims that UniCredit's deputy chairman Fabrizio Palenzona and two other top managers at the bank helped arrange financing for an Italian entrepreneur whom prosecutors claim has links to Matteo Messina Denaro, who is one of Italy's most wanted men and is believed by prosecutors to be the fugitive new leader of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra . In a statement distributed by UniCredit on Thursday, a lawyer representing Palenzona, an influential power-broker in Italy's financial circles, denied the allegations that Palenzona had links to Sicilian organised crime after his offices were searched by anti-mafia police. "The searches obviously turned up nothing whatsoever: nothing was found because nothing could be found because there was and there is absolutely nothing," Palenzona's lawyer Massimo Dinoia said in the statement. "Mr Palenzona does not even know the person that, according to investigators, he is supposed to have aided and abetted," Dinoia said. One of the executives under investigation is Chief Risk Officer Massimiliano Fossati, who was promoted by UniCredit, Italy's biggest bank by assets, to his current post on Oct. 1 as part of a management reshuffle. In a statement UniCredit said it had taken note of the reports that a number of its executives were the target of a judicial investigation, adding it was certain the claims would not be proven. It did not make any of the officials involved in the probe available for comment. The probe comes at a delicate time for UniCredit, which is struggling to boost revenues and strengthen its capital base to allay market worries it may need a capital increase. Chief executive Federico Ghizzoni is preparing to present an updated business strategy next month, and sources have told Reuters the bank could cut 10,000 jobs in Italy, Germany and Austria as part of the restructuring. (Reporting by Silvia Ognibene and Stephen Jewkes, writing by Silvia Aloisi; editing by Clive McKeef)