A third-party committee appointed by Olympus Corp., a major maker of cameras and endoscopes, to investigate the firm's accounting scandal said in its report Tuesday: "The management was rotten to the core and the surrounding portion was also contaminated, and the situation was a typical example of salaryman mentality in a negative sense."
The panel found that Olympus began making speculative investments with financial assets in 1985 and that unrealized losses reached nearly ¥100 billion in the last part of the 1990s.
As of 2003, it had hidden ¥117.7 billion losses by employing an elaborate loss separation scheme. The panel said that if Olympus' costs to manage the scheme are taken into account, losses would amount to ¥134.8 billion.