Rome – Suspicions that a famous Italian porn queen might have faked her death 11 years ago were fuelled on Tuesday when the mayor of a small town in northern Italy denied her family’s claim that she was buried in the local cemetery .

Massimo Arata, the mayor of Lerma in Piedmont, said in a magazine interview that Moana Pozzi’s name was not to be found in the cemetery’s burial records .

“These are the only valid official documents and there is no mention of any burial acts regarding Anna Moana Rosa Pozzi,” the mayor said .

Earlier this month, Rome prosecutors opened a fresh investigation into the death of the curvaceous blonde, saying official versions were full of “flaws and inconsistencies” .

Consumer rights’ group Coisuc pressed for the case to be reopened in the belief that Italy’s best-known porno star could still be alive, having faked her death to escape her past and begin a new life .

According to Pozzi’s family, the actress died of liver cancer on September 15, 1994 at the age of 33. They say she passed away in a hospital in the French city of Lyon and that her body was cremated and the ashes buried at Lerma in an unmarked grave .

News of Pozzi’s illness was kept a secret until after her death, which was not immediately announced to the press .

Up until two months before her death, Pozzi could still be seen in fine form, jogging every morning in one of Rome’s central parks .

The suddenness and secrecy fuelled rumours that the death had perhaps been faked .

The actress’s sister, Simona, repeated in a press interview earlier this month that Pozzi’s remains had been buried at Lerma but that the family had decided against a gravestone to avoid her fans besieging the cemetery .

“We want to keep everyone away,” the sister said .

But the family’s accounts of Pozzi’s death have only served to heighten the mystery .

Immediately after Pozzi’s death, the family said her body was immediately cremated and the ashes scattered on the Matterhorn in the Alps, in accordance with her final wishes .

But they later changed their story and said the ashes were buried at Lerma .

Meanwhile, the Lyon clinic where she is alleged to have died did not have cremation facilities and her cremation was not registered with the Italian authorities .

It also took seven months for the Italian authorities to receive Pozzi’s death certificate. Last year, prosecutors shelved an inquiry into her death requested by publisher Brunetto Fantauzzi, who has written a book about Pozzi – Moana: A Political Mystery – and holds the rights to some of her autobiographical writings .

Fantauzzi believes the cancer story is a hoax and has speculated that Pozzi perhaps wanted to hide her links to one or several top politicians. In her own memoirs, published in 1991 under the title The Philosophy of Moana, Pozzi referred to numerous liaisons with important people but named no names .

Her death followed a major upheaval on the Italian political scene, when vast corruption scandals brought down the once dominant Christian Democrat and Socialist parties .

“In my book, I don’t say that Moana is alive but I ask for proof of how she died. There is no definite proof of her death,” Fantauzzi said recently .

The head of Coisuc, Ennio Biasciucci, pushed for another investigation after reading Fantauzzi’s book .

“According to Fantauzzi, Pozzi was the lover and confidante of politicians at the forefront of Italian political life and of cardinals involved in national scandals, as well as actors, sportsmen and very important businessmen,” he said .

“The decision to open an inquiry shows there are serious doubts about what exactly happened 11 years ago,” he said .

He said that, for example, nobody outside Pozzi’s family had been allowed to see her corpse or the urn with her ashes, not even staff at the Lyon clinic .

He also said Pozzi’s listing at Rome’s chamber of commerce, describing her as a publisher and businesswoman, had never been closed .

But another popular ex-porn star and former friend of Pozzi, Eva Henger, has told the press she is convinced the actress died of cancer .

“I saw the various stages of her illness… She was very weak and sometimes couldn’t even get out of bed,” said Henger, who was married to Pozzi’s former porn industry manager Riccardo Schicchi .

“She even phoned Riccardo from the clinic in Lyon to say she was doing well, that she had put on five kilos and wanted to get back to work immediately. Three days later, they informed us she was dead,” Henger said .

Pozzi, who came from an intellectual family, began a career as an aspiring starlet in 1981, straight after leaving school. She was given a score of small parts, even working under legendary director Federico Fellini playing the part of a curvaceous model in the movie Ginger and Fred .

However, she never made it big until 1987, when she hooked up with Schicchi and his Hungarian-born star Ilona Staller, better known by her stage name Cicciolina .

Staller became an international celebrity in 1987, when she won a parliamentary seat with the Italian Radical Party .

Moana later joined Staller in founding the Love Party, campaigning to legalise brothels, introduce better sex education and create ‘love parks.’ Pozzi unsuccessfully ran in the 1992 national elections and again in local elections in Rome in 1993 .

Although she never won a seat, her electoral stripteases on her first campaign trail and her more sober rallies the second time around won her thousands of fans .

She went on to become a popular TV talk show guest and hosted several variety shows .