Parmalat Finanziaria Company

The Italian unit of Grant Thornton said it had acted scrupulously in its audits of Parmalat and insisted it was a victim of fraud in its accounting work for the huge food group. The accounting firm said it had not masked the financial situation of Parmalat, which this week filed for bankruptcy protection after revealing it was missing billions of euros listed in its accounts.

Wells Fargo & Co. emerged as the biggest creditor of Parmalat Finanziaria after the judge overseeing the Italian dairy company's bankruptcy protection issued a final ruling on more than $33.8 billion in claims. San Francisco-based Wells had $827 million in claims accepted. The bank didn't lend the money directly to Parmalat; the credits stemmed from Wells' work setting up trusts to channel funds raised for Parmalat by Bank of America Corp., primarily from U.S. insurers.

Italian prosecutors investigating the Parmalat fraud scandal met representatives of Citigroup and Deutsche Bank as they turned their sights on banks linked to the food group. Separately, a judicial source said Parmatour, a tourism company owned by Parmalat's founding Tanzi family, had a hole of as much as $3 billion in its accounts, a claim the company swiftly denied.

Italian police seized documents from a Citigroup Inc. unit as prosecutors investigated whether anyone at the U.S. bank had helped the now-insolvent food group dupe investors. In Milan, tax police took documents from the offices of Eureka, a unit of Citigroup. The biggest U.S. financial services firm said it was assisting Italian authorities. Investigators are trying to establish whether anyone from Citigroup had helped Parmalat-linked firms raise debt backed by inflated invoices. From Reuters

The founder and former chief executive of Italy's Parmalat said he was aware of his group's financial difficulties but not of the real situation of its balance sheet, a newspaper reported Sunday. According to La Repubblica, Calisto Tanzi also said he was convinced that his "genius" ideas would counterbalance what he described as insufficient finance management skills.

A federal judge refused to dismiss a lawsuit that accused Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and Grant Thornton International of helping Italian dairy company Parmalat Finanziaria to understate its debt and overstate its assets. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in New York is the second in three weeks in which he has refused a request by the two accounting firms to dismiss a lawsuit. He ruled June 28 that a suit by Parmalat stockholders and bondholders could proceed.

A New Jersey judge ruled that Parmalat, the insolvent Italian dairy company, may proceed with its $10-billion fraud lawsuit against Citigroup Inc. Separately, Citigroup said the Securities and Exchange Commission had subpoenaed accounting information for 2001 through 2004 in connection with a probe of its Argentine business in 2001 and 2002, when losses topped $2 billion.

A U.S. federal judge has allowed Parmalat to proceed with its $10-billion lawsuit against Bank of America Corp., but threw out most of the Italian dairy company's claims. The recent decision is a setback for Parmalat Administrator Enrico Bondi, who has sued the two largest U.S. banks, Bank of America and Citigroup Inc., and former auditors Deloitte & Touche and Grant Thornton International for $10 billion.

The turnaround expert appointed to sort out the financial woes of Italian dairy giant Parmalat will confer with Italy's leading banks today in a bid to try to save the ailing company, stung by one of Europe's biggest financial scandals and the arrest of its founder and other top executives. Italian state TV reported Sunday evening that Enzo Bondi would hold his first meetings with banking officials. How new lines of credit might be established was expected to be on the agenda.

Citigroup has told Italian prosecutors it might have been a victim of fraud in the Parmalat scandal, according to judicial sources in Parma, Italy. Citigroup's concerns were over presumed irregularities with invoices involving milk concession holders. Citigroup declined to comment. Fausto Tonna, who was Parmalat's top financial officer, has reportedly talked with prosecutors about the relations Parmalat had with several international banks, including Citigroup.