Toshiba president, 7 senior execs quit over Y150 bil scandal

So who are their auditors and are they complicit?

Pat its simple, corruption is the norm here, its deeply ingrained & ACCEPTED by J-inc & govt, together they keep the charades going for decades, accounting is a massive black hole, no one knows whats really what around here!

And when caught the penalties are pretty much non-existant!

THATS how it ""works"" in Japan

Don't large companies have independant auditors go over their accounting? Can someone who works in th Japanese financial industry tell me how this works?

@strangerland & @lucabrasi

impressed with your komakai language skills… not to mention your eagle eyes… (^_^)

'stepped down' vs 'resigned' maybe?

Their heads should have been taken off when they bowed. That is, after all, the truly Japanese thing to do.

I am impressed with capitalism.

Analysts said the share price jump was the result of investors buying back into the battered stock, no it was from the heartfelt apology and deep bow, which as we know in Japan cures all of J Incs woes, back to business as usual

You are right, he basically said that he will resign from his current POST, not that he is walking away from the company.

I don't see 辞任 or .辞職 as that different. Neither implies necessarily leaving the company.

Big business is all corrupt.

If the CEO actually ordered accountants to hide losses.... then that is a major crime. Investors may have bought Toshiba stock based on their numbers looking good... but if the numbers were doctored... then the culprit should be brought up on criminal charges. What about all the investors that have lost money.

Sad THEY WERE MY FAVE company and my wifes grandfather too. Everyting is Tosshiba in his house. He was 99 years old but loved Toshiba

"We are so deeply sorry from the bottom of our hearts, that we got caught"

@Strangerland

You are right, he basically said that he will resign from his current POST, not that he is walking away from the company.

And the other astonishing thing is that one of the executive involved in pressuring his subordinates to inflate profits, Sasaki, is actually a member in various government panels, and also a vice chairman of Keidanren, the nation’s most powerful business lobby.

This is baffling, and when I say that corruption is deeply entrenched int his country, people say me no it isn't. Well it is....

These fraudsters will get their day in court, but they will receive suspended sentences, as is the norm in Jaoanese corporate fraud cases. There has been so many of these cases it is easy to predict the outcome. Nobody went to jail for the Olimpus scandal. Nobody went to jail for Kanebo scandal and nobody faced any criminal charges what-so-ever over the Fukushima disaster, even though they openly admitted it was man-made disaster. Should I also mention the Toyota air-bag scandal? No charges were brought against them in Japan. Only in the U.S.

It's such a joke!

Lets see MASSIVE fraud & not a keystone to be found..................no arrests ................

J cops will give at least a weeks notice before raiding the company, enough time for the shredding machines to break all world records.

@Strangerland.

You're dead right.

辞任 is giving up your duty, or your function.

辞職 is giving up your work, or your job.

Very different.....

Lets see MASSIVE fraud & not a keystone to be found..................no arrests ................ just what does an oyaji have to do to get arrested when they reach the upper ranks, apparently billions of yen isn't high enough.........WTF!

Actually I am not surprised at all, watch the wagons circle just like Olympus, I am tell you all J-Inc is ROTTEN TO THE CORE!!! And has been for many decades!

Is there anyone left not bilking their company? Japan Oink

Strangerland: Definitely a Japanese resignation; they'll still collect pay and stay on as 'advisors'. And needless to say, given that it's Japan, they won't be prosecuted. They can now literally walk away to the millions they've likely syphoned off and live of that, if 'worse comes to worst'.

Good old Japan Inc.!

I just saw this on TV. The president said 辞任いたします. This sounds a lot like he is staying in the company, and just resigning from the board. If he was truly quitting the company, I think he would have said 辞職, not 辞任. Can anyone else comment on this?

In May, Toshiba warned over the ballooning accounting “irregularities”

Myself and others have stated since this first broke that "irregularities" was just the Japan Inc. code word for fraud, and was brought on by cultural issues withing corporate Japan. And, of course, we got the usual "thumbs-down' from the Japanophiles among the coments that "Japan is not alone". Well, guess we were right afterall, and, I ask the usual defenders of Japan, how "Japan not being alone", helps the stockholders of Toshiba one bit? Unfortunately, Japan Inc. is built on a sliding scale of corporate ethics, and more of these are sure to follow.

Groundhog Day in corporate Japan, who's next?

In a stinging indictment, the report by a company-hired panel said managers were involved in “systematically” inflating profits over several years, in one of the most damaging accounting scandals to hit Japan in recent years

Accounting fraud with no recourse to judicial process, it is simply astonishing that corporate criminality can be allowed to manifest in such a manner and over a prolonged period of time. It's behaviour reminiscent of the untouchables.

"Gomen ne!"

"Now let's move on to a plush job as advisors to the LDP!"

The findings drew a rebuke from Japan’s finance minister Taro Aso who called the affair “woefully regrettable”.

True, but he ought apologize for his lack of leadership as finance minister at the same time as he issues criticisms of others. With Aso heading the Finance Ministry, Japan's fiscal discipline is as poor as Toshiba's lack of abiding by regulations.

Wakarimasen,

Kinyucho asleep at the wheel.

Seems harsh. The article notes that it was securities regulators who triggered these revelations earlier this year.

stepped down after an independent report found senior management complicit in a years-long scheme to pad profits.

Yeah yeah independent report. They make it appear that an investigation was necessary to figure out who was responsible for this mess. There is no way that this didn't come from above, I hardly believe that a few bunch of minions could have decided one day after waking up to just try to change by billions of yen the company accounting. Makes no sense.

They are making all this staged media frenzy to make the world believe that this needed an investigation to find who was responsible but they do know that this is basically how Japan Inc. works. Just let's try to make it appear less embarrassing to the world.

Toshiba had a corporate culture in which management decisions could not be challenged,”

This is how all Japan works, hardly limited to Toshiba.

And I notice that none of those high-level executives are being prosecuted right away for what is a serious affair here. However they did put a foreign women (the ex-Toyota executive) in jail for three weeks for no charge.

the world’s first laptop personal computer

Hardly true as this self claimed by Toshiba and one can argue that previous machines hitting the market before the Toshiba T1100 were also laptop computers. But anyway...

and there jail terms? oh wait this is Japan, bow and all is forgotten.

Is this a 'real' resignation, in that they are not employees of Toshiba anymore? Or is it a 'Japanese politician' resignation, wherein they resign their position, but remain on the payroll as employees? Anyone know?

This must be the most embarrassing moment of the life of these executive and directors.. Honesty truly is the best policy. Some people learn this the hard way. What goes around comes around. Being dishonest only hurts. To lead a successful well-rounded life, honesty is the best policy.

Kinyucho asleep at the wheel. too busy chasing foreign banks and securities companies......

Oh NOEZ,not another scandal involving a company and book cooking!!!!!!!!

Anyone who has been around a while knows how this works. A few months later they are rehired on full pay as "advisors". And everyone forgets.

Onion in hand, no doubt. Amazing how a few crocodile tears in Japan gets you off scot-free.