A US class action law firm has filed suit against Parmalat representing US investors in the scandal-ridden Italian food group.
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The lawsuit, filed by Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, also names investment banks Citigroup, Deloitte & Touche Tohmatsu and other firms that advised Parmalat, as defendants, reported Reuters.
The law firm is representing the Southern Alaska Carpenters Pension Fund and other investors who bought Parmalat’s shares and bonds between 1999 and 2003.
Parmalat filed for bankruptcy in December, rocked by a massive financial scandal involving the overstatement of earnings and assets by billions of euros.
Meanwhile, Parmalat’s former finance chief, Fausto Tonna, has said the company’s founder and former CEO Calisto Tanzi was to blame for the accounting scandal.
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By GlobalDataTaken from prison for further questioning, Tonna claimed he had been following Tanzi’s orders, Reuters reported, citing a judicial source.
Prosecutors believe Tonna helped set up a network of offshore holding companies with fictitious assets, leaving Parmalat with a hole in its accounts of several billion euros.
Eight people, including Tonna and Tanzi, have been arrested in connection with the accounting scandal, although no charges have so far been brought.
Investigators have not yet found any missing money, and authorities in Ecuador have said they have found no irregularities in Parmalat’s operations there. Tanzi visited Ecuador shortly before he was arrested in December.
Elsewhere, French milk supplier Groupe Laitier des Pyrenees has been put under administrative control after Parmalat failed to pay it around €2m (US$2.6m) owed for November and December.
