European Union finance ministers meet in Brussels Tuesday to discuss the possible implications of alleged accounting fraud at bankrupt Italian food giant Parmalat.
The EU's top financial regulator, Fritz Bolkestein, who will address the ministers, has said he will make proposals to set up accounting oversight boards in each EU member state.
Meanwhile, U.S.-based Bank of America denied allegations by a lawyer for several Parmalat creditors that it has an account containing billions of dollars of Parmalat funds.
The lawyer said earlier this month that he had traced nearly $8 billion in Parmalat funds to a Bank of America account in New York. But a bank spokesman says a system-wide search of deposit accounts showed that such an account does not exist.
Authorities believe as much as $13 billion may have disappeared from company accounts. They suspect Parmalat executives and foreign banks tried to disguise the loss in a complicated web of offshore units and money laundering schemes.
Some information for this report provided by AP and Reuters.