Parmalat scandal takes new twist with aide's suicide

A Parmalat employee who had been questioned in the Italian company’s fraud scandal died in an apparent suicide after he jumped off a bridge into a river, officials said.

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

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

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

Deutsche Bank offices were searched yesterday and documents were being studied because of a €350m 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 on Thursday evening after he felt tingling in an arm, said lawyer Fabio Belloni.

Mr 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 small river in the countryside near Parma, the area where the food giant 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 post mortem results before making an official ruling on the death.

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

“Bassi was in the condition, however, of being able to furnish useful elements to the investigation,” Mr Picciotti told reporters at Parma’s courthouse last night.

Tanzi, 65, was arrested on December 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 an €8bn gap in the firm’s balance sheet and told interrogators that up to €500m 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 did not have nearly €4bn of its funds as the dairy company had falsely claimed. Soon after, Parmalat was granted bankruptcy protection.