Sun, Jan 25, 2004 page6

• Parmalat executive commits suicide

  • AP
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  A Parmalat employee who had been questioned in the company's fraud scandal died in an apparent suicide, officials said, as investigators searched another bank office and again questioned the company's jailed founder.

  Alessandro Bassi had worked closely with two jailed former company financial managers, Italian news reports said. Bassi had been questioned by investigators but wasn't considered a suspect, prosecutors said.

  Meanwhile, prosecutors kept up their marathon questioning of suspects, interrogating Parmalat founder Calisto Tanzi in a Milan hospital Friday after he was transferred there from prison for medical tests.

  

  Carabinieri at a bridge in Parma, northern Italy, after Alessandro Bassi, 42, an accountant and close aide of jailed Parmalat chief financial officer Fausto Tonna, threw himself from the highway bridge on Friday. Bassi, who leaves behind a wife and two children, had faced questioning by magistrates earlier this week but had not been charged with any wrongdoing.

  PHOTO: EPA

  Investigators have been concentrating on two fronts: Parmalat records and questioning of current or past company employees as well as scrutinizing documentation of banks which placed Parmalat bonds or gave the multinational food conglomerate credit.

  Deutsche Bank offices were searched Friday and documents were being studied because of a US$445 million bond issue that the bank placed for Parmalat in late September.

  A spokeswoman for the bank in Frankfurt, Germany, said of the search: "We will continue to fully cooperate with the authorities."

  Milan Prosecutor Francesco Greco said the banks were not the targets: "No banks or financial institutions are under investigation. We are only trying to acquire the elements necessary to reconstruct some of the operations that Parmalat managers conducted."

  Tanzi, who has a history of heart problems, was taken to a hospital Thursday evening after he felt tingling in an arm, said lawyer Fabio Belloni.

  Bassi had been a close aide to two of the company's top financial figures, Fausto Tonna and Luciano Del Soldato, Italian state television said. He plunged to his death from a bridge over a river in the countryside near Parma, the area where Parmalat has its headquarters.

  "We don't know whether the suicide was connected to the Parmalat scandal," Parma prosecutor Pietro Errede told reporters near the river bank. "We're considering the death a suicide."

  Authorities were awaiting autopsy results before making an official ruling on the death.

  Another Parma prosecutor, Vincenzo Picciotti, said that when Bassi was questioned Tuesday "no element of responsibility emerged" for him.

  "Bassi was in the condition, however, of being able to furnish useful elements to the investigation," Picciotti told reporters at Parma's courthouse Friday night.

  Tanzi, 65, was arrested on Dec. 27. Earlier this month, he was denied house arrest on grounds that he might flee the country or tamper with evidence.

  Tanzi is one of 10 people arrested in the case. He has admitted to a US$10 billion gap in the firm's balance sheet and told interrogators that up to US$640 million was diverted from Parmalat to cover losses by his family's tourism businesses.

  The Parmalat scandal unfolded last month after the company acknowledged that Bank of America didn't have nearly US$5 billion of its funds as the dairy company had falsely claimed. Soon after, Parmalat was granted bankruptcy protection.

  In Brazil, Carlos Casseb, a lawyer for Parmalat's Brazilian creditors, said Parmalat's dairy unit there needs US$36 million in credit to keep operating.

  Parmalat has been struggling to make payments to milk producers and other suppliers in Brazil, where banks cut off the credit lines last month after the scandal broke.

  Brazilian police are trying to determine whether Parmalat funds were hidden in that country or illegally moved abroad, while other investigations into the company's books and finances are expected to be launched.

  Heavy expansion by Parmalat in South America, coupled with that continent's economic slump in recent years, are widely believed to have figured in Parmalat's shaky finances.
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