Case 35: Parmalat (Italy, 2003)

• Prof. Dr. Klaus Henselmann
• Dr. Stefan Hofmann

Parmalat, one of Italy’s most significant commercial entities and one of the largest food-based companies in the world, carried out one of the biggest and most brazen accounting frauds in history, reportedly over the course of a decade. Many analysts took to calling Parmalat “Europe’s Enron”. Indeed, the scandal was so massive that it compares to Enron, WorldCom and the other high-profile U.S. corporate frauds in terms of scope, complexity and amount of money involved. In its 2002 group accounts, Parmalat claimed that its accounting principles were in line with established international accounting standards as well as Italian standards. Yet it appeared not to be so.

Seiten 206 - 214