A businessman who had ties to former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi is the alleged mastermind behind an October bomb attack against one of the country's leading investigative journalists, police said on Monday. Rome's Carabinieri police said they arrested Valter Lavitola for allegedly ordering the attack outside journalist Sigfrido Ranucci's house last year. Italian entrepreneur Valter Lavitola, right, is accused of being the mastermind behind a bomb attack targeting an Italian journalist. Sigfrido Ranucci, Italian journalist for the investigative television news show "Report," waves to supporters from a balcony of Italian TV broadcaster RAI in Rome on Oct. 17, 2025. Lavitola, a former journalist and import-export businessman who owns a restaurant in Rome, is well known in Italy, having been close to Berlusconi, who died in 2023.