A 50-year-old employee at NEC Engineering Ltd. stole about 50 million yen from the company by falsifying business transactions worth a total of 36.3 billion yen from March 2002 to last December, NEC Corp. alleged Wednesday.

NEC Engineering's parent company said it will fire the male employee and file a criminal complaint against him after its lawyers and accountants wrap up an investigation of what it called dubious business practices.

NEC said the falsifications inflated its reported group operating profit by 9.3 billion yen.

NEC said it will revise its financial statements after consulting with its auditor.

The electronics maker said the manager, who was in charge of designing semiconductor manufacturing devices, repeatedly fabricated transactions between NEC Engineering and its business partners by falsifying internal documents.

NEC quoted the employee as saying he used the money for "drinking and eating."

But some aspects of the alleged embezzlement remain unclear, including why the business partners kept paying for the fake orders. NEC said it would continue its probe to get to the bottom of the scam.

The employee worked at NEC Engineering's Tokyo head office.

NEC said a project for which he was responsible was losing money and the fake deals apparently began as an attempt to cover the losses.