ROME Prosecutors seek the arrest of Parmalat's former CEO

ROME (AP) -- Prosecutors have asked a judge to confirm the arrest of Parmalat's founder and former chief executive after they accused him of market rigging, fraudulent bankruptcy and making false statements to auditors to hide a multi-billion dollar hole in the dairy company's balance sheet.
A ruling in the prosecutors' favor would convert the detention of Calisto Tanzi into a formal arrest, and allow charges to be officially leveled against him.
Parmalat, which has annual sales of around $9.2 billion, produces and sells milk, yogurt, juice and other food products in Europe, the United States and around the world. It employs 36,000 people in 29 countries.
Tanzi was picked up late Saturday in Milan as the criminal investigation intensified into the near-collapse of the company he founded in 1961 and turned into one of the models of Italian industry.
He was questioned Sunday by prosecutors from Milan and Parma, where the company is based, who are each conducting probes into the case that has been dubbed by some as "Europe's Enron."
Parmalat's shares, which have plummeted 90 percent since the company acknowledged it had misrepresented its financial position earlier this month, were suspended indefinitely by the Italian Stock Exchange late Sunday. Parmalat shares last traded at $0.13.
Parmalat's problems exploded into public Dec. 19, when it revealed that Bank of America Corp. wasn't holding about $4.9 billion of its funds, as the Italian company had reported in September.
Since then, the estimated amount of money missing from its balance sheet has ballooned, with Italian reports saying as much as $12 billion could be missing from what may have been 15 years of false accounting.