How Olympus Reportedly Got Tangled Up With the Japanese Mafia

A month into its cover - your - eyes scale account dirt , Olympus has been officiallylinked to the Nipponese Yakuza , accord to a memorandum from Japanese officials . Here ’s how things unraveled so fast .

Back in 2008 , Olympus paid some shadowy “ fiscal advisor ” a $ 687 million fee after the disasterous $ 2.2 billion takeover of a medical equipment company . And that fee is take care more and more likely to have in reality been an endeavor to hide dramatic loss . By laundering them , fundamentally , through companies experience to have Yakuza linkup .

In Japan , companies used to be able to hide losses by using a practice call “ tobashi , ” which basically let them trade bad plus — clobber they ’d lost money on — to other companies , and then bribe them back later , once they could open to . Except the payments would be disguised as sweetheart deals or , course , consultive fees . And it turns out that the ship’s company running Olympus ’s tobashi deals were screw to have tie beam to the Yakuza .

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Flash forward three eld to October 14th , when then - Olympus CEO Michael Woodford was fired — send out the troupe ’s stock into a spin . Mt. Olympus at the fourth dimension said Woodford was being countenance go because of managerial conflict , but — and here ’s where the crazy start — Woodford has literallygone to groundsince his release , arrogate that the real reason he was fired is that he started asking questions about the $ 687 million payment . “ I ’ve been advise by contact in Japan that I should take care of my guard . There is a potential for organise crime to be behind some of this , ” hetold ABC World News .

After Woordford ’s claims , the FBI immediately launch an investigation into the fee . And while Olympus has been deny claims that it ’s in seam with “ anti - social grouping , ” executives keep resigning , includingChairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa , who had replace Woodford as CEO . Kikukawa claim he stepped down to “ reinstate confidence in the fellowship , ” and definitely , absolutely , totally not because the Japanese securities watchdog had started sniffing into all of the questionable deals Woodford manoeuvre out .

The sad part is that Olympus is in the middle of make some really awesome products right now , likethe wonderful PEN EP-3 . Here ’s hop that a few billion in miss funds maybe funnel to an surreptitious engineer crime syndicate does n’t mess up that up too bad . [ New York Times , Reuters , Verge ]

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