Kansas City, Mo. ? Former leaders of Farmland Industries Inc. are accused in a lawsuit of causing the cooperative’s bankruptcy through acts of “corporate waste” and “gross negligence.”

The cooperative’s liquidating trustee filed the lawsuit Wednesday against 29 former officers and directors, including former chief executives Harry Cleberg and Robert Honse.

Kansas City-based Farmland filed for bankruptcy May 31, 2002. Before it collapsed, the one-time Fortune 500 company was the largest farmer-owned agricultural cooperative in North America, with $11.8 billion in revenue in 2001.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Kansas City by J.P. Morgan Trust Co., seeks more money for creditors; it asks for unspecified actual and punitive damages from the defendants.

The lawsuit specifically mentions a decision in 1997 by the Farmland board to build a fertilizer complex in Coffeyville, Kan., for more than $300 million, the assumption of “catastrophic debt” and Cleberg’s “sweetheart bonus” of $700,000 in 2000.

After the company sought bankruptcy protection, the Coffeyville complex and refinery were sold for $11 million, a loss of about $300 million.

From 1996 to 2000, the cooperative assumed $400 million in additional debt, bringing its total debts to $1.3 billion. More debt was taken on to finance what turned out to be money-losing ventures, eventually prompting debt rating agencies to downgrade the company’s debt rating to junk bond status.