Olympus core management ‘rotten’- panel
An independent panel issued a damning report on a US$ 1.7 billion accounting scandal at Japan's disgraced Olympus Corp on Tuesday, urging legal action against the executives responsible for the cover-up and the replacement of other board members who knew. The six-man panel of experts found no link with organised crime, however, an outcome that may help the 92-year-old maker of cameras and endoscopes remain listed on the Tokyo stock exchange and survive a scandal that ranks among Japan's worst. But the report failed to satisfy Olympus' ex-CEO Michael Woodford, who blew the whistle on the scandal after being fired. "The core part of management was rotten and the parts around it were also contaminated by the rot," the panel said in its report, which was commissioned by the company and ran to more than 200 pages. Olympus has lost about half its market value since Mr Woodford, an Englishman, was sacked in mid-October and went public with his concerns over murky accounting and some expensive and questionable acquisitions.