Police in Italy are reported to have found gold ingots worth almost two-million dollars at the villa of a financier at the centre of a corruption scandal.

The man, Licio Gelli -- former grandmaster head of the Italian P2 masonic lodge -- was arrested last week in southern France.

The gold -- one-hundred-and- fifty bars of it -- was found during a search of terracotta flower pots on the terrace of his villa in the Italian province of Tuscany.

Licio Gelli, who's seventy-nine, was sentenced in 1994 to twelve years in jail for his part in a major bankruptcy fraud, but disappeared while on parole.