Calisto Tanzi, the founder and former chief executive of Italian food conglomerate Parmalat SpA, has been sentenced to 18 years in jail yesterday for his role in a fraud at the firm.

The judge in the city of Parma also sentenced the company's former financial director Fausto Tonna to 14 years in prison, and Tanzi's brother Giovanni to 10 years, seven months.

The case thus reached its logical conclusion, said a lawyer who represented thousands of defrauded investors.

In 2003, Parmalat, then the world's largets producer of ultra-high treated (UHT) milk, collapsed in Europe's largest bankruptcy after faking documents of a 3.95 billion-euro ($5.34 billion) account at Bank of America Corporation.

The milk major later emerged from bankruptcy and returned to the stock market two years later, in 2005, under chief executive Enrico Bondi.

In May  2009, Parmalat signed a deal to buy the Clarence Gardens milk factory, other processing plants and associated depots from National Foods for an approximate A$70 million, increasing its presence in the Australian dairy industry (See: Italy's Parmalat to acquire National Foods' Australian dairy units).

Tanzi, who had started the business in 1961, was earlier convicted for 10 years for stock market manipulation, following an earlier trial in Milan, but had appealed.
A representative of the investors told Italian television, ''I believe (this sentence) is right, since these people have caused much pain and despair to many people. And it's right for them to pay for it.''

At the time of its collapse, Parmalat had employed about 36,000 people in 30 countries.

''Parmalat was the symbol of a sick system and the biggest debt factory of European capitalism,'' investigator Lucia Russo said during the hearing. 

In his defence, Tanzi argued that he and his company were victims of the banking credit system whilst he has regularly accused various banks of continuing to sell Parmalat bonds to small-time investors even when they knew all too well that the group was insolvent.

According to BBC,  72-year-old will not be imprisoned pending a final ruling by Italy's Supreme Court.

Also, the so-called ''Save Previti'' law, passed in December 2005, rules that anyone over 70 years of age is exempt from serving time in prison ''provided that the person in question is not a habitual, tendential or professional delinquent nor that he / she has a previous conviction''.