Panel Clears Accounting Firms in Olympus Fraud [Reuters]
An unofficial panel of experts cleared the global accounting groups KPMG and Ernst & Young of any responsibility for a $1.7 billion accounting fraud at the Olympus Corporation on Tuesday, though the role of the firms remained under official review. The scandal, one of corporate Japan’s worst, had raised questions over the role of the two audit firms, which signed off on company accounts before the 13-year fraud finally surfaced in October. But the panel of lawyers set up by Olympus to look at the role of auditors said in a report on Tuesday that internal auditors were to blame, saying five of them, former and current, were responsible for 8.4 billion yen ($109 million) in damages. The panel effectively found the fraud, identified by a separate investigation as having being hatched by two former top executives in the 1990s to conceal losses, had been too well covered up for the external audit firms to have uncovered it. “The masterminds of this case were hiding the illegal acts by artfully manipulating experts’ opinions,” the report said.
Gloria Gaynor gets butchered.