Toshiba's third-party accounting probe comes under fire from lawyers' group

A third-party probe set up by Japan’s Toshiba Corp to investigate its accounting practices has been given a failing grade by half of a group of influential lawyers, who said it was not sufficiently independent and did not examine a key division.

Did anyone really expect anything else? Come on, everyone knows "corporate governance" is a complete myth in Japan.

Toshiba is only one additional example to add to the list along with Olympus. There are so many other smaller listed (publicly held) companies that have been doing the same things and other infractions (like executive perks). I'm glad to see outside auditors waking up and no longer rubber-stamp attesting to doctored annual reports and year-end statements that conceal the chairman's (and complicit officers) egregious disasters, personal expenses and "consultancy fees" to obscure and questionable entities/individuals at shareholder and employee expense..

It's great that this lawyers' group can see through the obfuscation but isn't this a glaring signal that there must be a criminal case to answer. When will it ever get going? Is this degree of corruption illegal or not?