Parmalat to sue auditors
PARMALAT, the bankrupt Italian food company, is suing outside auditors Grant Thornton and Deloitte & Touche, seeking £5.5 billion in damages.
The lawsuit described Grant Thornton auditors as "active conspirators" with Parmalat’s former management.
Grant Thornton partners, it claimed, aided Parmalat’s management in "setting up fictitious companies and structuring fake transactions whose only purpose was to siphon off billions of dollars of assets from Parmalat".
£10bn Parmalat fraud trial begins
THE founder of one of Italy's most famous companies went on trial yesterday accused of fraud following a £10 billion financial scandal that shocked Europe.
Calisto Tanzi is the former chairman of Parmalat, a dairy company that is a household name in Italy, providing milk, yoghurt and cheese to millions of people.
The firm was also once the sponsor of local football club Parma, and its cash helped secure some of the side's top players who won the Italian championship in the early 1990s.
Tanzi is one of 18 company executives accused of market rigging, providing false accounts and misleading Italy's stock market in a scandal that led to the crash of Parmalat two years ago.
Thousands of investors lost money in the crash and at previous pre-trial hearings there were ugly scenes as many turned up to protest at their losses.
As a result, at the start of yesterday's proceedings in Milan, police were on hand to control demonstrators and Tanzi himself did not show up until an hour into the trial - through a side door.
Tanzi, who at the time of the scandal fled to South America, was one of only a handful of defendants who attended the start of yesterday's proceedings.
When he arrived ...