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Ex-Parmalat chief goes on trial for fraud

Rome: Europe’s biggest ever fraud trial gets under way in Italy on Friday with a cast of 56 accused, nine judges and the possibility of more than 30,000 witnesses, in order to reach a verdict in the 2003 collapse of dairy group Parmalat, which left €-14 billion in debts and more than 100,000 investors out of pocket.

Calisto Tanzi, Parmalat’s former chief executive, is charged with fraudulent bankruptcy. He is suspected of covering up debt at the firm, which he nurtured from a small family business trading in salami into Italy’s biggest food company. Judges will wade through huge numbers of document pages to decide if Mr. Tanzi and other managers at the firm, now known as “Europe’s Enron”, cooked the books for years before finally acknowledging, when they had difficulty making a bond payment, that their debt was eight times bigger than previously acknowledged.

The firm declared itself insolvent and lawyers say Mr. Tanzi is too frail to take the stand.

The trial amalgamates five smaller trials and is reportedly set for 125 hearings presided over by Eleonora Fiengo, the chief judge.— © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2008

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