A court in the northern Italian city of Parma on Thursday sentenced the Parmalat food conglomerate's founder and ex-CEO Calisto Tanzi to 18 years in prison for his role in its 2003 fraudulent bankruptcy. Other Parmalat managers were also sentenced over what was one of Europe's biggest-ever fraud scandals, AKI reported.
Prosecutors had asked for a 20-year jail term for Tanzi for his role in the scandal, which destroyed the savings of some 135,000 people, left a gaping 14 billion-euro hole in the company's finances and destroyed the image of a top Italian business.
The court sentenced Parmalat group's former financial director Fausto Tonna to 14 years in prison and Tanzi's brother Giovanni Tanzi, got 10 years and six months.
"I did not expect such a severe sentence," said Calisto Tanzi, commenting on the verdict in a statement delivered by his lawyer, Giampiero Biancolella.
Prosecutors asked for prison sentences for 16 other defendants including 12 years for Tanzi's brother Giovanni and nine and a half years for Tonna, for a range of financial crimes.
In an earlier trial, Tanzi, 72, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for stock market manipulation and giving false information to Italy's stock market regulator Consob. The verdict was confirmed in May following an appeal.
At the time of its collapse, Parmalat employed around 36,000 people in 30 countries and was a leading Italian business. Parmalat was declared bankrupt in December 2003 after it emerged that four billion euros it supposedly held in an offshore Bank of America account did not actually exist.
Investigations showed the group had been in difficulty for many years, surviving only by its massive falsification of its balance sheets and sophisticated financial instruments.
Tanzi defended himself, saying: "My intention was to save Parmalat."
Tanzi and 12 others, along with five international banks - Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, UBS and Citigroup - are also on trial in the northern city of Milan for alleged share price manipulation and organising bond issues to cover their own potential losses.
Tanzi's defence has blamed the banks that sold Parmalat bonds to small-time investors even when they knew that the group was insolvent.
Tanzi and over 50 ex-members of Parmalat's management are at the centreof two other trials in Parma. The first focuses on Parmalat's acquisition of the mineral water company Ciapazzi and the bankruptcy of Parmalat's tourism division Parmatour. The second trial concerns Parmalat's 1999 purchase of milk company Eurolat from Cirio, another food giant which went bankrupt.