Investigators believe US$300 million of Parmalat money passed through Cayman banks

Sunday, January 4, 2004

ROME, Italy: Italian and Swiss auditors are looking for US$300 million belonging to bankrupt food giant Parmalat and believed to have passed through banks in the Cayman Islands on its way to Malta, where it may have been invested.

According to a Brazilian financial institution, it had issued a US$600 million Eurobond. Out of this, half went to repay a debt in Brazil, while the rest was sent to Cayman Islands banks, from whence it may have ended up in Malta. 

Investigators searching the New York premises of an Italian lawyer allegedly involved in the scandal over have found what were described as "interesting" documents, the ANSA news agency reported Saturday.

The documents discovered in the New York office and apartment of attorney Gianpaolo Zini were being sent to Italy, ANSA said, quoting sources close to the case in Parma, Parmalat's northern Italian home base. 

No details about the papers' contents have been made available.

Zini was taken into custody on December 27 and charged with fraud. Zini, and Lorenzo Penca, former head of the auditing company Grant Thornton SpA, were transferred Saturday in an armoured prison vehicle from Milan to a remand centre in Parma.

A further Grant Thornton executive, Maurizio Bianchi, was interviewed in custody Saturday in the northern town of Como and was reported to have categorically denied charges of "criminal association with the aim of fraudulent bankruptcy".

Police carried out further searches Saturday, seizing documents at the Banca Del Monte bank in Parma, whose chairman Franco Gorreri previously exercised executive functions with Parmalat.

The failure of Parmalat seems set to become the biggest financial fraud case in European history. The group employs more than 36,000 people in 30 countries. 

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