Livedoor Co.'s former Chief Financial Officer Ryoji Miyauchi testified about his former boss Takafumi Horie in court Friday and said that he and other former executives acted on orders from Horie to inflate the company's earnings for the business year to September 2004.
The key witness, speaking for the first time in Horie's trial at the Tokyo District Court, said former board members would go to Horie before executing the fraudulent share transactions to get his go-ahead.
"Our target was to earn 2 billion yen in pretax profit (for fiscal 2004) . . . and Horie ordered us to include the proceeds from the transactions (in Livedoor's financial records) to boost profits," Miyauchi told the court.