Parmalat Worker Was Listed as a Chief (worked the switchboard)

PARMA, Italy, Jan. 8 - An employee in charge of Parmalat's switchboard was listed as the chief executive of more than 25 affiliated companies, investigators said Thursday.

Italian investigators have been following leads provided by a former chief financial officer, Fausto Tonna. The disclosure that a low-level employee had been used - apparently unwittingly - to represent a top executive indicates the lengths Parmalat went to hide the true state of its finances through a complex web of subsidiaries.

On Thursday, Parmalat's former Italian auditor, Grant Thornton S.p.A., was expelled from Grant Thornton International, the network of accounting firms.

''Grant Thornton S.p.A. has been unable to provide sufficient assurances or access to the appropriate information and people in an acceptable time frame,'' David McDonnell, chief executive of Grant Thornton International, said Thursday. "We have lost confidence in Grant Thornton S.p.A. and are therefore acting clearly and decisively to protect our clients and the reputation of all of the other independent firms in the international network.''

Nan Williams, a spokeswoman for Grant Thornton International, said that the move was not made out of concern about potential liability to Parmalat creditors or investors but to protect the reputation of the international network.

As a result of the ejection, the Italian firm is not authorized to use the Grant Thornton name or to portray itself as a member of the Grant Thornton International network.

The ejection of the Italian firm "is predominantly a p.r. move'' said Dan L. Goldwasser, a lawyer at the firm of Vedder, Price, Kaufman & Kammholz in New York, aimed at preserving some of the good will associated with the Grant Thornton name. "It's designed to protect the brand,'' he said.

Ensuring that all the different member firms adhere to the same standards is not easy, he continued. "If you get too heavily involved in these operations, then you take on liability, and nobody wants to do that,'' Mr. Goldwasser said. "So you have to walk a tightrope.''

The employee who was a top Parmalat executive - on paper at least - was Antonio Ugolotti, who kept watch over the company's switchboard and its package deliveries. Little is known about Mr. Ugolotti, but local financial police say that he was listed as chief executive of a number of Parmalat's companies, including Nyte in Delaware and Camfield, a Singapore company that has been linked to the purported sale of millions of dollars worth of powdered milk to Cuba through another Parmalat subsidiary, Bonlat.

Mr. Ugolotti was not aware of his connection to the more than 25 companies to which he had been appointed chief executive, investigators said. He was asked to sign documents without understanding that he was signing as ''chief executive,'' they said.

Francesco Greco, who is leading the investigation for the Milan prosecutor's office, arrived at the local courthouse late Thursday for a meeting with his counterparts in Parma to coordinate the widening investigation. Two partners of another former auditor of Parmalat, the Italian affiliate of Deloitte & Touche - Giuseppe Rovelli and Adolfo Mamoli - were placed under investigation on Thursday.

Also on Thursday, a court in Parma declared Parmalat Finanziaria, the collapsed company's parent group, to be bankrupt, along with its units Eurolat and Lactis. Parmalat Finanziaria listed less than 27,000 euros ($34,476) in cash on its balance sheets and more than 1.2 billion euros in debt.

Authorities in Luxembourg have opened an inquiry on suspicion of money laundering in the insolvency of Parmalat Finanziara, Bloomberg News reported.

Doreen Carvajal reported from Parma, Italy, for this article, and Jonathan D. Glater from New York.

Little is known about Mr. Ugolotti, but local financial police say that he was listed as chief executive of a number of Parmalat's companies, including Nyte in Delaware

How long until people start demanding that the boards of companies registered in Delaware really are who they say they are?

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How long until people start demanding that the boards of companies registered in Delaware really are who they say they are?

Well, we could let FR start the ball rolling.

" How long until people start demanding that the boards of companies registered in Delaware really are who they say they are?"

Never. The lawyers will obfusicate in every imaginable manner. If you have falsified names, you have less liability until the corporate officers get caught.

6 posted on 01/09/2004 7:29:22 PM PST by Beck_isright ("Deserving ain't got nothing to do with it" - William Money)

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