A death threat to Giuseppe Orsi, chairman and CEO of Italian aerospace and defense company Finmeccanica, was written by a “mythomaniac” and not by the far-left Red Brigades, a Finmeccanica source said on Friday.

The message “Death to Orsi” and a five-pointed star, a Red Brigades symbol, was discovered on the wall of an office at one of the state-owned conglomerate’s units, Ansaldo Energia, in Genoa.

Roberto Adinolfi, chief executive of Finmeccanica unit Ansaldo Nucleare, was shot in the leg on May 7 in an attack claimed by an anarchist group.

A Finmeccanica source said that following initial checks, investigators believed the pencil-written message at Ansaldo Energia “cannot be in any way linked to subversive circles but is an action of a mythomaniac”.

Italy is facing a resurgence of politically inspired violence driven by its economic crisis.

Security is to be reinforced at 14,000 locations including offices of Finmeccanica.

Responsibility for the Adinolfi attack, reminiscent of the politically motivated violence that raged in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, was claimed by anarchist group called Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), which said it would strike again.

Trade unions went on strike and a staged a rally in Genoa against violence earlier this week.