Police surrounded a hideout Saturday where they believed a kidnapped billionaire was being held for a huge ransom by left-wing gunmen threatening to kill the Brazilian businessman, sources said.
The abductors were demanding millions of dollars and safe exit from the South American nation in exchange for the release of Abilio Diniz, chairman and principal stockholder of Pao de Acucar, a Brazilian international conglomerate, a police source said.Officers surrounded what they believed was the gunmen's hideout, located in the Jabaquara neighborhood of Sao Paulo, 270 miles southwest of Rio de Janeiro.
The gunmen threatened to kill Diniz, 52, if police attacked, according to sources.
The kidnappers were believed to be three Chileans and one Argentine belonging to the underground Leftist Revolutionary Movement.
A police source said the kidnappers originally demanded $36 million "for the benefit of the guerrilla movement." But they later modified their demands to ask for an unspecified amount of money, an armored car and an airplane for escape after the business magnate was freed.
Authorities said that they had denied the demands as of Saturday afternoon. But two police delegates, specialists in anti-kidnapping tactics, had entered into negotiations with the kidnappers, authorities said.
The sources said Diniz was kidnapped Monday. His family kept the kidnapping a secret until Saturday, when police said they discovered his whereabouts after they captured and interrogated six Chilean suspects, two men and a woman.
The Diniz fortune is estimated at $2 billion. His Pao de Acucar organization has 50,000 employees in a chain of supermarkets, financial firms and insurance companies.
Among its 546 separate businesses are supermarkets in Portugal, Angola, Guinea Bissau, China and the Soviet Union.
Police sources said Diniz was kidnapped at 8 a.m. Monday when his Mercedes Benz sedan was intercepted by a passenger car and a fake ambulance 400 yards from his home in Sao Paulo, Brazil's industrial center.
The sources said Diniz was pulled out of his car by a man disguised as a policeman and another man dressed as a medical aide.