Ninth arrest in Parmalat scandal
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Prosecutors say the hole in Parmalat's accounts could be as much as 10 million euros.
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Italian police detained the founder of scandal-struck Parmalat.
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PARMA, Italy (Reuters) -- The former head of Parmalat's operations in Venezuela has become the ninth person to be arrested in the food group's massive fraud scandal after he returned to Italy, his lawyer said.
Giovanni Bonici was jailed in the northern city of Parma, his lawyer Antonino Tuccari said.
Prosecutors in the city have launched an investigation into the multi-billion-euro hole in the accounts of the crippled multinational which has its headquarters just outside Parma.
Bonici briefly managed the group's Cayman Islands unit, Bonlat, which is at the center of the fraud probe after a four-billion-euro bank account was exposed to be non-existent.
He was due to be interrogated on Saturday, Tuccari said, adding he planned to ask for house arrest for his client.
Bonici had only followed orders from Parmalat in Italy and had signed off on the final page of already completed contracts faxed to him from the group's headquarters "without understanding what he was doing," the lawyer said.
He added that Bonici had close ties with Parmalat's former chief financial officer Fausto Tonna and then with another CFO, Luciano Del Soldato, both of whom are among the eight people previously arrested in the case.
Earlier police investigating the Parmalat affair searched offices of Bank of America in Italy's financial capital, Milan, a Reuters correspondent said.
Bank of America in London said it had no immediate comment on the search.
Bank of America managed the sale of Parmalat bonds and also structured other business for the company.
Parmalat's crisis exploded last month after Bank of America declared as false a document purporting to show a Parmalat unit had some four billion euros in an account with the bank.
Public prosecutors on Thursday put a former Bank of America executive, Luca Sala, under investigation in the probe.
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