The paper identified the pilot as Luigi Fasulo, who made a fortune in the airplane business, but lost it all after becoming a self-styled investor.
He was reported variously as 65 or 67-years-old and said to live in Pregassona, a suburb of Lugano, Switzerland — not far from where the flight originated.
La Repubblica quoted his son Marco and a friend, identified only as Franco, who both insisted the incident that immediately raised the spectre of a new September 11-type attack was a suicide.
“What do you mean an accident? It was a suicide, a suicide, I’m telling you. There were people who wanted to ruin him, to destroy him financially, so he committed suicide,” Marco Fasulo said, without elaborating.
The friend Franco, meanwhile, recounted his last conversation with the pilot on Sunday.
“I am ruined, they used up everything I had, it’s a group located here, they got more than a million dollars (1.1 million euros) from me,” the friend quoted Luigi as saying.
But fellow pilots and friends scoffed at the speculation of suicide.
“The idea that he committed suicide seems absurd to me,” said Scossa, who had known Fasulo for 40 years.—AFP