Today, as a guest of Dr Bondi, I was at Parmalat. Here is the text of my speech

“Parmalat is a company that is growing in terms of profits, receipts and its net financial position that is now back in the black with profits of 87.4 million euro as reported in the most recent quarterly declaration which is very good.
Its shares have been appreciated by investors and they have reached 3.3 euro compared to 2 euro at the end of 2005, almost doubling in value.
Thanks for this situation must be given to the Administrator, Dr Enrico Bondi and to the management and to all those who have believed in the future of a company that seemed finished.
I would like to call to mind that Parmalat represented the biggest financial collapse of any company in Italy. A collapse that could be foreseen in the balance sheets, just by looking at them. The responsibilities are of the whole system.
Where were the controls of the banks that placed Parmalat bonds with their clients up until a few days before the collapse? Where was Consob and the Bank of Italy?
All they had to do was make a public denunciation with evidence to back it up, as they had all the elements of the analysis, to stop the destruction of the savings of tens of thousands of small investors.
The Parmalat scandal, together with others that have followed, has had significant effects in the loss of credibility of the country in relation to abroad.
Italy is in the last position for foreign investments and the reason is not the presumed interference of the government, as has been hurriedly affirmed by our monopolists without money, but it is due to the lack of rules, of checks, of attention to policies, to financial information that is crystal clear and understandable to citizens.
Italia dei Valori has confidence in your company and in the reform of the Stock Exchange and the Consob with the introduction of true governance rules to protect the market.
I just want to mention a series of situations that give rise to the lack of trust of investors, to bankruptcies, to income from position, to the destruction of value.
The mechanism of Chinese boxes with the possibility to control a company without having the majority shareholding and often with laughably small percentages with the transfer of dividends of 90/100%, dividends that are taken away from investments and employment.
The blatant and widespread conflict of interests in which what is controlled and what is controlling have the same people in the Boards of Directors of the companies, even present as managers.
In whose interests are they acting, these Directors? Always in the interests of the one that controls. And the small shareholders of the company being controlled just take note of their losses.
Stock options are a true means of stripping down a company in favour of the few and not in favour of all those who create the value.
The lack of governance rules to protect the small shareholders and the basic impossibility on their part to group together because of the current rules.
The political system is responsible for this situation with pardons, false accounting, decriminalization, prescrizione. With a bitter taste in my mouth I have to say that politics is more often on the side of the institutionalized thieves than on the side of the citizens.
The most recent example is the draft law that would have seen a reduction in the maximum penalty for the crime of fraudulent bankruptcy from 12 years to 6 years.
This law would have seen the absolution of people like Tanzi and Cragnotti thanks to the reduction of the system of legal time frames that came in with the ex-Cirielli law. Italia dei Valori for the moment has managed to block its passage. But we are alone.
Parmalat has still not concluded its trials but I personally want to assure Dr Bondi and the citizens who are making the civil claim, that they have my complete willingness to be available.”