First the meteoric rise and then the great collapse of Parmalat: the story of Calisto Tanzi, who disappeared at the age of 83 years, will remain forever linked to that of the food giant from Collecchio, a stone's throw from Parma, which he brought to success but also to the scandal of false financial statements and bankruptcy.
Tanzi, who was also a great football magnate and led Parma (with Nevius Scala on the bench) to come close to winning the Scudetto and establishing himself internationally, he was born in Collecchio on 17 November 1938 and had had to interrupt his studies to take over, after his father's death, a small company of cured meats and preserves. Alone 22 years he founded a milk company in 1961 by taking over his grandfather's old company and from there he began his escalation which led him to the construction of a world food empire with 130 factories.
Tanzi had invented the long-life milk but it didn't stop there and expanded into the food sector (preserves, snacks, yoghurt), tourism, TV and big football. In the 90s he landed on the Stock Exchange and was one of the great protagonists of finance of those years but his own ambition betrayed him and little by little it became clear – thanks to the intervention of the judiciary – that the Tanzi empire was a giant with feet of clay built on false balance sheets and real scams at the expense of about 80 small savers.
According to the investigators "Parmalat was the largest debt factory in the history of capitalism". Long trials followed, the imprisonment of Tanzi himself, the sentences and the end of the Italian dream of Parmalat which was sold to the French. In December 2010 Tanzi was sentenced to 18 years for a crack of 14 billion euros.
