Thursday, May 2, 2011, Calisto Tanzi was jailed on a conviction of market rigging related to the collapse of ‘the dairy giant empire’ Parmalat more than seven years ago. Italy’s highest court upheld Tanzi’s conviction. The Rome court reduced the sentence from ten years to eight years and one month in prison. Tanzi, along with former executives were ordered to pay the company $2.9 billion and compensate defrauded investors in an amount estimated at about $44 million. (“Ex-Parmalat Chief,” 2011)
For the best part of a decade Parmalat SpA, an Italian multinational dairy and food group committed and got away with one of the most sophisticated and largest acts of fraudulent accounting in recent history. They carried out a number of fraudulent practices designed to mislead and create a false image that the company was financially healthy. Some of their most prominent practices are identified below. 1. Forged bank accounts Management stated there were bank assets that did not, in fact, exist