Officials from Dazhong Taxi have turned to the Swiss Consulate in Shanghai for help tracking down a 25-year-old man who left his passport and a laptop computer in a cab earlier this month.

The man, who the passport identifies as Nadim Itani, left a computer bag containing the laptop and Swiss passport in the back of a taxi on July 22. Dazhong officials have talked to the media to try to find the man, with no luck. So yesterday they went to the Swiss Consulate.

Cab driver Lin Feng said he picked up the young man in Gubei area around 8:30am on July 22 and dropped him off at the intersection of Dingxiang and Fangdian roads near Thumb Square.

After paying the 33-yuan fare, the passenger grabbed his jacket from the back seat but left his computer bag.

"We also found an entry pass for a local exhibition with his photo on it," said the cabbie.

Lin confirmed the missing passenger was the man in the passport photo.

Anyone with information about Itani can call Dazhong official Wang Xingfa at 6614-4935 or contact the consulate.

Also yesterday, an Italian businessman residing in the United States contacted Shanghai Daily to express his gratitude and surprise that a cabbie with the Shenlun taxi fleet returned a wallet full of cash he left on the front seat on July 6.

Franco Andreato, who is in the middle of a four-month business trip to Suzhou, took a short visit to the city with his wife and a Chinese friend on July 6.

He left his wallet with US$2,300 and two credit cards inside the cab and didn't ask for a receipt, making it almost impossible to track down the taxi driver.

To his surprise taxi driver Zhu Deming traced him to his hotel and returned the property to him.

"I cannot describe the joy to see the driver, Mr Zhu Deming, when the hotel called me to the lobby when I was in bed at 11:30pm," Andreato wrote in a letter to the paper.

"The happiness to get my wallet back was great but the most important (thing) in my eyes is that in Shanghai there are honest people like Mr Zhu."

"I trust that Shanghai is a safe city," he wrote.