Cay: The accountants missed the boat with Parmalat

According to a report by Bloomberg News, filings with Maltese regulators show that a Deloitte & Touche examiner in Malta approved the accounts of a Parmalat subsidiary, without challenging profits that flowed from a $7 billion loan to Bonlat Financing Corp, another Parmalat subsidiary registered in the Cayman Islands.

Although, Deloitte helped precipitate the collapse of the Italian dairy group Parmalat Finanziaria SpA by raising questions in October 2003 about transactions at Bonlat, Deloitte auditors should have raised doubts about the transactions six months earlier, say three accountants who read the statements at Bloomberg's request.