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Italy's main Parmalat trial adjourned to May 6
2008-03-14
The main trial prompted by the collapse of Italian food giant Parmalat was adjourned Friday to May 6, when the court may decide to merge it with other trials under way here. Presiding Judge Eleonora Fiengo scheduled further hearings for June 13 and October 16. The trial involves 55 defendants including the group's founder, Calisto Tanzi, and his brother Giovanni, chief financial officer Fausto Tonna and several bankers on charges of bankruptcy fraud and criminal association. Tanzi and Tonna face up to 15 years in prison if convicted in the scandal, dubbed "Europe's Enron" after the failure of the giant US energy company. The Parmalat affair erupted in late 2003 when more than 14 billion euros (22 billion dollars at current exchange rates) went missing from the group's accounts. The demise of the food conglomerate, which employed 36,000 in 30 countries, wiped out the savings of around 135,000 people in Italy. The Parma trial may be merged with several others here, notably that of Parmatour, the group's tourism business. Meanwhile in Italy's economic hub Milan two other trials are focusing on the financial aspects of Parmalat's collapse. Five foreign banks -- US giants Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America as well as Switzerland's UBS and Deutsche Bank of Germany -- are in the dock accused of share price manipulation. They are suspected of organising bond issues, taken up by small savers, with the goal of using fees earned in the operation to reduce their losses if the enterprise failed in the full knowledge of the group's financial insolvency. Some 40,000 Italian savers are claiming damages from the banks. A second trial in Milan, also on share price manipulation and false financial information, involves Italian banks, auditors and individuals including Tanzi and several of his colleagues. Tanzi's adult children, Francesca and Stefano, have already negotiated lighter prison terms in one of the Milan trials. The trial that opened here Friday is the biggest because it involves the most defendants and the most serious allegations, including bankruptcy fraud, false accounting, criminal association and communicating false information. "Mr. Tanzi has assumed his responsibilities but we would like to have a determination on all the other responsibilities," said Bianco Lella, a lawyer representing the group founder. "All those who contributed to making savers the victims must be held accountable." Tanzi was not present Friday but will attend future hearings. Speaking for Adusbef, an association that defends the interests of savers, lawyer Pierfilippo Centonze said: "We represent 700 civil parties and we hope our clients will be reimbursed, because the banks and auditing offices implicated in the scandal are quite solvent." Lella, representing Calisto Tanzi, said his client had "offered his apologies." "But we know that that is not sufficient. Unfortunately there is no hidden treasure," Lella said.
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