Olympus Scandal May Have Organized Crime Links

Japanese camera maker and medical equipment manufacturer Olympus, already the subject of a deepening investigation over what its leadership admitted was “extremely inappropriate accounting,” was dealt another blow this week as reports surfaced that the embattled company may have ties to the Yakuza, Japan’s largest organized crime syndicate, according to Agence France-Presse, which helped it hide billions of dollars worth of investment losses over the course of several years.

Olympus had already been under a great deal of scrutiny from authorities after it came to light that the company had paid a $687 million advisory fee after acquiring British medical company Gyrus, an unusually large sum account for over a third of the acquisition price. The company also entered into a series of other acquisitions of small, unlisted Japanese companies from 2006 to 2008 with little discernable revenue or business history, and wrote off their value a year later. While at first asserting that there was nothing untoward about these expenditures, company leadership later admitted that it had paid excessive amounts in order to cover up investment losses stretching back to the early 90s.

New information reveals, though, that the scandal may go even deeper than improper accounting: the series of deals the company engaged in to hide its losses may have been brokered by financiers with links to the Yakuza and the company may have, as a consequence, financed organized crime, according to Reuters. Japanese press is reporting that the 10 brokers who helped ease the deals through were not, themselves, members of the syndicate but that they had links to people who “conduct economic activities together with antisocial forces,” a known euphemism in Japan to mean yakuza. The third-party panel that Olympus had set up to investigate the scandal denied the reports that money could have been sent to organized crime, saying that the investigation has not found any evidence to indicate such.

However, the scandal has attracted the attention of authorities: the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's organised crime division has joined in on the investigation, continued Reuters.

Outside suspicions of links to organized crime, the investigation into the company’s checkered past has broadened to include the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office, which has opened a formal investigation into the matter, as well as the FBI, according to the Financial Times.