Japanese prosecutors raided the offices of Olympus Corp and the home of a former executive yesterday in a probe into a US$1.7 billion accounting scandal that has threatened the survival of the once-proud camera and medical equipment maker.
Tokyo prosecutors, police and financial regulators have joined forces in a rare joint investigation of the 92-year-old company, which has admitted to hiding huge investment losses via questionable merger and acquisition deals and other accounting tricks stretching back over two decades.
Public broadcaster NHK showed dozens of black-suited investigators marching double-file into an office building that houses three Olympus subsidiaries acquired under one of the loss-making schemes, in what has become one of Japan’s biggest corporate scandals.
Investigations moved into high gear after a panel of experts appointed by Olympus to probe the scandal said early this month that two senior former executives masterminded the scheme with the help of investment bankers. It also found that three former presidents, including Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, who resigned in October over the scandal, had known about the cover-up.
Japanese TV also showed investigators raiding Kikukawa’s residence, as well as Olympus headquarters in a high-rise office district on the western edge of central Tokyo.
Olympus acknowledged the raids in a statement.
“We will continue to cooperate fully with investigative authorities in order to bring the facts to light,” the company said.
“We would again like to apologize deeply for causing great trouble and worry for our shareholders, investors and those we do business with,” Olympus said.
Olympus last week filed five years of corrected accounts, plus overdue first-half results, meeting a Tokyo Stock Exchange deadline to avoid a humiliating delisting, but they revealing a much-depleted balance sheet as the company tries to put the scandal behind it.
The company could still face delisting if the exchange deems that the company’s accounting deceit is sufficiently grave.
Former chief executive Michael Woodford, who blew the whistle on the scandal after being fired in October, is campaigning to get his job back, but he faces long odds in his battle with current management, which is expected to get backing from its bankers for a plan to bring in outside investors to bolster the company’s finances.
“I’m tremendously sad that it’s come to this, especially when it could have been avoided, depending on the actions of upper management,” Olympus employee Masaharu Hamada said outside the company’s headquarters as it was being raided.
Hamada has taken legal action against the company in a case unrelated to the accounting scandal, charging that he was subjected to harassment by management after reporting a compliance breach by his supervisor.
A lower Tokyo court has ruled in his favor and the case is now on appeal.
DIVIDED VIEWS: Although the Fed agreed on holding rates steady, some officials see no rate cuts for this year, while 10 policymakers foresee two or more cuts There are a lot of unknowns about the outlook for the economy and interest rates, but US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled at least one thing seems certain: Higher prices are coming. Fed policymakers voted unanimously to hold interest rates steady at a range of 4.25 percent to 4.50 percent for a fourth straight meeting on Wednesday, as they await clarity on whether tariffs would leave a one-time or more lasting mark on inflation. Powell said it is still unclear how much of the bill would fall on the shoulders of consumers, but he expects to learn more about tariffs
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
NOT JUSTIFIED: The bank’s governor said there would only be a rate cut if inflation falls below 1.5% and economic conditions deteriorate, which have not been detected The central bank yesterday kept its key interest rates unchanged for a fifth consecutive quarter, aligning with market expectations, while slightly lowering its inflation outlook amid signs of cooling price pressures. The move came after the US Federal Reserve held rates steady overnight, despite pressure from US President Donald Trump to cut borrowing costs. Central bank board members unanimously voted to maintain the discount rate at 2 percent, the secured loan rate at 2.375 percent and the overnight lending rate at 4.25 percent. “We consider the policy decision appropriate, although it suggests tightening leaning after factoring in slackening inflation and stable GDP growth,”
PLANS: MSI is also planning to upgrade its service center in the Netherlands Micro-Star International Co (MSI, 微星) yesterday said it plans to set up a server assembly line at its Poland service center this year at the earliest. The computer and peripherals manufacturer expects that the new server assembly line would shorten transportation times in shipments to European countries, a company spokesperson told the Taipei Times by telephone. MSI manufactures motherboards, graphics cards, notebook computers, servers, optical storage devices and communication devices. The company operates plants in Taiwan and China, and runs a global network of service centers. The company is also considering upgrading its service center in the Netherlands into a
RSS