Creditors Seek Control of 2 Parmalat Divisions

MILAN, Italy —  Parmalat’s troubles deepened Thursday after six foreign creditor companies sued the global food group, which is caught up in one of Europe’s biggest business scandals.

Hours after the company filed for bankruptcy protection in Italy, a group of foreign life insurers holding unpaid bonds sued to win control of two Parmalat units in the Cayman Islands.

The suit was the first publicly announced move by Parmalat creditors to recover billions of dollars of investments jeopardized by a crisis at Parmalat that has thrown a spotlight on some of the world’s biggest banks and auditors.

Prosecutors are investigating allegations of fraud at Italy’s eighth-biggest industrial group after a financial hole that could exceed $12.4 billion was found in its accounts -- a “shameful disaster,” Agriculture Minister Gianni Alemanno said.

Some 20 people, including Parmalat founder and former Chief Executive Calisto Tanzi, are under investigation on allegations of fraud, false accounting and market rigging.

Investigators sought to interview Tanzi on Wednesday but discovered he had left Italy for an undisclosed location.

A judicial source said Tanzi was willing to return to Italy to face questioning, but his absence complicated efforts to quickly find out how at least $8.7 billion disappeared from the dairy group’s books.

Those , questioned, including three former chief financial officers, have told investigators of a complex web of offshore shell companies masking billions of dollars of losses and overseen by senior company officials, judicial sources have said.

Police on Wednesday searched Tanzi’s house in Collecchio, the Italian town where Parmalat has its headquarters, and sealed off the offices of La Coloniale, the Tanzi family holding firm that controls the group.

Starting in 1961 with a pasteurization plant near Parma, Italy’s gastronomical capital, Tanzi, 65, built Parmalat into a global food group through a string of acquisitions in what became one of Italy’s biggest corporate success stories.

The group, whose juices, biscuits and long-life cartons of milk line shelves from Brazil to Australia, has about 35,000 employees in 30 countries.

Late Wednesday, six insurers said they had asked the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands to liquidate two Parmalat offshore units, Food Holdings and Dairy Holdings.

The creditors -- Jefferson-Pilot Corp., Monumental Life Insurance Co., New York Life Insurance & Annuity Corp., Principal Financial Services Inc., Transamerica Occidental Life Insurance Co. and Transamerica Life Insurance & Annuity Co. -- said they wanted control of the units after Parmalat failed to repay bonds due this month.

Parmalat officials were not available for comment.

On Wednesday, Parmalat filed for protection from creditors under a new fast-track procedure pushed into law by the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in an attempt to save the country’s biggest food group.

The government has appointed Enrico Bondi, a veteran rescue expert who was named Parmalat’s new CEO 10 days ago, as the commissioner charged with drafting a turnaround plan.

Shielded from creditors by the new decree, Bondi has two years to restructure the group. But it was not clear whether the decree would protect Parmalat’s complex offshore interests from creditors eager to be repaid.

Some experts have said North American creditors might force Parmalat to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States in an effort to better protect their interests.

The companies that brought the suit in the Cayman Islands said they did not want to hamper Parmalat’s efforts to save its business and were willing to cooperate with the firm.

But the suit puts more pressure on Bondi, who sources said was keen to take into account the interests of creditors as well as employees and suppliers.