Former chairman of Daio Paper under investigation for gambling away billions

Japanese companies notoriously follow the demands of the President or CEO and fear asking questions about anything that might be strange or out of line. It's the prerogative of the President to do whatever he pleases, a modern day daimyo, and damn anyone that isn't subservient or doesn't blindly give their fealty to the company and boss.

Roflmao

@Yubaru, only if the president or the CEO are big share holder, meaning if they are part of the founder(s). Hired CEOs and presidents don't have that kind of authority.

This is hardly a rare event for Japan Inc, look at hato-chan & his silly allowances from his money who takes it outta Bridgestone, pretty common occurance in these neck of the woods haha

Looks like he should have just stuck to playing Pachinko.

from his mommy not his money haha, well same thing I guess!

I think he did go to vegas

He should be commended for spending real money in Vegas.

As director of a paper company, who knows what kind of counterfiet paper money he could have made.

Although Ikawa returned some of the money, as of the end of October, 5.93 billion yen had still not been recovered.

I am wondering how the CPA working for Daio have justified the loss of 4.93 billion yen on the financial statement.

globalwatcher,

Japan is a giant black hole as far as accounting goes, you never ever believe whats written in annual statements etc, the truth is simply never there in most cases

GW, that's too bad. We (I am in US) do not fully trust any official data coming out of China as they are somewhat distorted. Now Japan is lowering its level to China as far as a fidiciuary duty goes. Sounds like the financial statement of Japanese corporation means NOTHING. It is just a meaningless data for underwriting. Hope Japan is rolling up the sleeves and beginning to prosecute bad guys. I would like to hear what Keidanren has to say on these incidents.

globalwatcher, yes clearly only Japanese and Chinese company data is distorted. An incident like this could never happen in Europe or the U.S., could it? And obviously all the search results from around the world for "boss defrauds company" are not the same thing.

we will see more and more of this crap come to light. wouldn`t it be grand if japan could really start fresh?

The company is called Daio, but the former chairman should be called Daimao (the demon king).

Unfortunately this happens worldwide. Another greedy and wealthy CEO that risked his family, reputation, wealth, power, everything. And for what? You've got to wonder, what motivates rich high powered CEO's to unnecessarily risk it all against logic and ethical principles. Exceptional success followed by devastating disaster comes from gambling. He probably risked away more wealth than he stood to gain from gambling or perhaps all that power and money made him feel invincible, untouchable, arrogant and above the law. And maybe he got caught because at some level, he knew what he was doing was wrong and wanted to be punished for it. You can never fell right doing wrong. He must have functioned exceptionally well until his issues got caught up after he retired and now a dysfunctional crook with no respect as a senior citizen.

What an idiot! The guy's father worked his butt off to make so much $$$ so that his son?? Grandson?? Could do this kind of stupid thing??

Maybe he used to work for Olympus and learned his ways there.

globalwatcher, yes clearly only Japanese and Chinese company data is distorted. An incident like this could never happen in Europe or the U.S., could it?

billyshears -- fair enough point. A comparison between this situation and the TYCO scandal are obvious. But, that was almost ten years ago. And, what remains to be seen whether this and the Olympus scandal will finally make Japan get serious about corporate governance or just muddle on. Sarbanes - Oxley put corporate CEO's, directors, and auditors responsible criminally for any shenanigans. Will Japan do likewise? Doubt it.