Activist told Parmalat was cooking books

ROME, March 23 (UPI) -- Italian comic and activist Beppe Grillo Monday testified he had an inside tip that books at the now-bankrupt dairy company Parmalat were being fudged.

Grillo was testifying at a trial into the 2003 bankruptcy of Parmalat, Europe's biggest corporate collapse, ANSA reported.

He told the court he had an inside tip in 2001 from a senior Parmalat executive that the company's ''books were cooked," the Italian news service reported.

Before testifying, Grillo said regulators were at fault for not catching the accounting scandal.

''If you do something like this in the United States they give you 25 years in jail,'' he was quoted by ANSA as saying.

The news service said Parmalat's bankruptcy resulted in some $19.7 billion losses, ANSA said.