दूध का दूध और पानी का पानी!

If you were asked to invest in a company called 'Buco Nero' (black hole in Italian), what would your response be? Mighty suspicious. Unless you were the grand-daddy of investment like Citigroup.

An excerpt from Time magazine, 4 years ago:

As Parmalat expanded globally in the '90s, so did its network of bankers and financial advisers. Ferraris (Parmalat CFO) was one of them. For Citigroup, Ferraris scored what were seen as two coups: an early version of the securitization program — by which the company's receivables were packaged as debt instruments and sold to investors — and a retainer to advise Parmalat in the acquisition of Beatrice Foods in Canada, a transaction valued at $310 million. Ferraris also laid the groundwork for a complex financing scheme through a Delaware company called Buconero, the Italian for "black hole," which Citigroup set up for Parmalat in 1999। Buconero loaned a total of $137 million to a Swiss subsidiary of Parmalat that then distributed the money to other Parmalat companies. Buconero received a guaranteed return of almost 6%, plus a total of about $7 million in fees for Citigroup.

Yesterday, Parmalat founder Callisto Tanzi was sentenced to 10 years in prison for this securities scandal of 2004-05 in the iconic milk company that he founded and built. It remains to be seen if he actually steps into prison.