MILAN, Italy, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- The accountants for Italy's bankrupt dairy giant, Parmalat SpA (OTCBB:PLATF), say they had no role in any scheme to keep billions of debt off their client's books.

"If anything, it was we who were victims of grave fraud," Lorenzo Penca, chief of auditor Grant Thornton's Italian operations, said Saturday.

Prosecutors are investigating about 20 Parmalat officials, including founder Calisto Tanzi, over the suspected falsification of company documents. Police last week raided Grant Thornton's Milan offices and carted off boxes of documents, the Washington Post reported.

Some $9 billion is unaccounted for by Parmalat, Italy's eighth largest industrial group with a payroll of 36,400. The company filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday, was sued by six foreign creditors the next day and was declared insolvent by an Italian court at the end of the week.

After two weeks of analysis, Italian prosecutors say Parmalat's phoney book-keeping stretches back at least until the late 1980s.

Parmalat's former chief financial officer Fausto Tonna admitted to prosecutors earlier this week large parts of the alleged scheme, though he has said he was merely following orders.

FAO Schwarz toy stores to be 'rescued'

NEW YORK, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- New York City's flagship toy store, F.A.O. Schwarz, and a sister store in Las Vegas are being sold in a deal that will preserve the legendary name.

In a deal announced Friday, D.E. Shaw Laminar Portfolios purchased the bankrupt toy store company, the New York Times reported.

The New York investment firm that also acquired the company's Internet and catalog businesses, Shaw Laminar plans to remodel and reopen the two stores next summer.

FAO said in a statement that the deal required the approval of a bankruptcy judge. A source told the Times that the remaining 12 F.A.O. Schwarz stores as well as its 89 Zany Brainy stores would close.

The business was founded by Frederick August Otto Schwarz in Baltimore 142 years ago. He moved it to New York in 1880, and in 1931, in the midst of the Great Depression, he set up shop at the first of several Fifth Avenue sites.

The flagship store on New York's Fifth Avenue has been an emporium of dreams for children of all ages, bursting with collector's dolls, richly carved rocking horses and finely detailed model trains that chugged and whistled through little villages and mountain tunnels -- all at suitably elegant prices.

Redskins' owner makes team profitable

WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- Despite a weak record on the field, the Washington Redskins have one of the strongest balance sheets in the National Football League.

Daniel Snyder, the principle owner, has turned the club into a profit-generating enterprise even though the team failed to qualify for the playoffs for four straight seasons, the Washington Post reported Saturday.

The team earned an estimated $70 million a year, before taxes and interest payments, on revenues of more than $200 million and its annual net profit is estimated at $20 million to $25 million.

When Snyder purchased the team it had a half-billion in debt, but he has succeeded in cutting the debt in half, bolstered by good earnings, low interest rates and his recruitment of new investors who injected more than $200 million into the team last summer.

He has squeezed 6,000 new seats into the stadium, added several new sponsors and maximized marketing opportunities by issuing a Redskins cheerleaders swimsuit calendar and putting the Redskins brand on everything from diecast miniatures of the B2 stealth bomber to Santa Claus.

Forbes magazine estimated Snyder might get $1 billion for the team he bought for $800 million five years ago.

Syria, Iraq plan new oil pipeline

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- Syria's oil minister says his country is discussing with Iraq a project to build a new oil pipeline between the two neighboring Arab nations.

Ibrahim Haddad said the planned pipeline would have a 1.4 million barrels per day capacity and link Iraqi oil fields with Syrian terminals on the Mediterranean Sea, the Saudi daily al-Hayat reported Saturday.

He said the sanctions that the United States is threatening to impose on Syria under the Syria Accountability Act "would not affect the Syrian oil sector."

"The oil sector might be affected slightly in terms of excavations and prospecting, but marketing will not be undermined as scores of European and Eastern companies are competing to get our oil products," Haddad said.

Syria's current oil production is 500,000 bpd, of which 200,000 bpd are consumed domestically.

He also said Damascus signed an agreement with Turkey allowing an Arab natural gas pipeline going through Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon to cross Turkish territory to Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria.