Former MGM Owner Parretti Jumps Bail, Skips the Country

Italian businessman and former Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio owner Giancarlo Parretti, whose ability to surprise seemingly knows no end, shocked his own lawyer on Friday by jumping bail and fleeing the country three days before he was to be sentenced in Delaware for perjury and evidence tampering.

State authorities in Delaware issued an arrest warrant for Parretti after discovering that the onetime studio owner slipped quietly out of Los Angeles this week.

Federal authorities in Los Angeles, who have been working to extradite Parretti to France to face fraud charges there, are expected to issue a warrant as well. In addition, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles has an ongoing criminal investigation into Parretti’s purchase of MGM in 1990.

Parretti’s Beverly Hills lawyer, Jay M. Coggan, received word via fax at 9:15 a.m. that Parretti had fled. In it, Parretti said he was in Italy and was being represented by lawyer Manlio Morcella in Parretti’s hometown of Orvieto, north of Rome.

“I’m shocked. I represented the man for three-and-a-half years. Regardless of others’ opinions of him, I found him nothing but honorable,” Coggan said. Coggan confirmed that he is now out $10,000 that he had personally posted to help Parretti make bail.

In addition to the fax he received, Coggan said Parretti sent another fax to the Delaware court saying that he can’t get to the state for his sentencing because Italian officials won’t let him.

Friday’s development is another in a long series of bizarre twists and turns in the Hollywood career of the ex-waiter who burst onto the Hollywood scene in 1990 when he talked French bankers into giving him the money he needed to buy MGM for $1.3 billion.

Parretti, 55, made the purchase even though it was later revealed that he had a lengthy criminal record in Italy that included fraud, embezzlement, tax fraud and conspiracy to commit bodily harm.

Parretti, once called “the New King of Hollywood” by host Robin Leach in a gushy “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” profile, had his Hollywood career come to an abrupt end when Credit Lyonnais seized MGM in 1992 after a court fight that started after Parretti defaulted on his loans. The studio was sold by the bank last year to a group that includes billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, Australia’s Seven Network and current MGM Chairman Frank Mancuso.

Parretti lately had been living with his son in a Burbank apartment while pressing a civil case in Los Angeles against French bank Credit Lyonnais, which backed his MGM purchase. Coggan said Parretti had surrendered his passport to authorities here as a condition of his bail.

Arguing that Parretti was a flight risk, federal authorities had fought hard to keep him in jail pending extradition ever since arresting him in the middle of a deposition in a downtown Los Angeles law firm in October 1995. But Parretti was freed a month later by a federal appeals court, which ruled that detaining him could violate his constitutional rights.

Parretti fled to Italy after losing the studio amid fraud allegations, returning unexpectedly in 1995 to Los Angeles, where he was arrested. In October, he was found guilty of perjury and evidence tampering in a 1991 case in which Credit Lyonnais was trying to wrest control of the studio from him. He faces up to 10 years in prison.

In addition, Parretti has been found “extraditable” to France by a Los Angeles federal court, a ruling he had been appealing. French officials have charged him with fraud, theft and embezzlement related to his MGM purchase.

By fleeing the country, Parretti scuttles his personal civil case against Credit Lyonnais because that was a condition of his being free on bail. In addition, Parretti forfeits $100,000 bail in Los Angeles. Lawyer Coggan said that the majority of that amount was secured by real estate pledged by a Parretti business associate.

In addition, Parretti was free on $100,000 bail in Delaware. Coggan said only $25,000 of that amount had to be posted, which he said Parretti himself put up.