"While the farmers were milking their cows, Mr Tanzi, founder of Parmalat, was milking the Italians," complains one farm worker bitterly. Thousands of jobs are now on the line as investigators struggled to trace Parmalat's missing billions. Gianfranco Bocchi, Parmalat's chief accountant, is thought to have been responsible for falsifying the accounts. His wife Ilaria believes he was forced to go along with his bosses' plans: "I think he was asked to do certain things and out of loyalty, thought he would do it to save the company," she says. "I don't think his intention was to defraud." However this comes as scant consolation to betrayed investors. Lawyer Carlo Zauli believes that Parmalat's executives were aided by some of the world's biggest banks. He claims to have tracked down some of Parmalat's missing billions to an offshore Bank of America account. And as prosecutors probe Parmalat's affairs, the role other companies played in its collapse can only come under closer scrutiny.