Parmalat's collapse — 'Europe's Enron'

Founded in 1961 by Calisto Tanzi as a small pasteurized-milk business, Parmalat grew into Italy's largest food company and a major multinational dairy brand, employing more than 36,000 people across 30 countries. Behind the growth, the company had for years used a network of offshore subsidiaries in places like the Cayman Islands to hide mounting losses and debt while reporting steady profits to investors. The fraud unraveled in December 2003 when Bank of America disclosed that a document purporting to show a Cayman Islands unit holding €4 billion on Parmalat's behalf had been forged, complete with a fabricated bank employee's signature. Auditors soon found a roughly €14 billion hole in the company's accounts, and Parmalat filed for bankruptcy protection before the end of the month, in what was then the largest corporate collapse in European history. Tanzi was arrested and eventually sentenced to 18 years in prison, and the case prompted Italy to overhaul its bankruptcy and financial-market oversight laws.