MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Kidnappers have released F Macri.

Kidnappers have released at 5am today unharmed the 19-year-old daughter of an Italo-Argentine construction magnate after they collected $800,000 in ransom, Argentine police reported.

They said Florencia Macri was in good shape after her abductors released her in Moreno, 45 kilometers (27 miles) west of Buenos Aires, where she had been kidnapped Tuesday as she was leaving class at the university there.

Her father, Franco Macri, who owns the SOCMA construction, waste management and express delivery consortium, refused to report the crime to authorities, limiting the police's ability to intervene.

The victim's stepbrother, Mauricio Macri, owner of the Boca Juniors professional soccer team and candidate for mayor of Buenos Aires, was also kidnapped back in 1991.

A $600,00 ransom secured Mauricio's release after two weeks in captivity but his abductors, most of whom turned out to be renegade former police officers, were apprehended, tried and jailed the following year.

Kidnapping has become a thriving sideline for Argentina's criminal class and a threat to the country's elite ever since a five-year-old recession led to economic meltdown that pushed around half the country's population onto the wrong side of the poverty line.