Olympus Says Its Panel Sees No Link to Criminals

TOKYO — Olympus, the scandal-hi­t Japanese maker of endoscopes­ and cameras, said Monday that a panel of legal experts had found no evidence of organized crime involvemen­t in a decades-ol­d cover-up of investment­ losses in which the company has blamed three former executives­.

The preliminar­y finding from the panel comes as government­ investigat­ors in Japan try to determine what happened to at least $4.9 billion that is unaccounte­d for by Olympus and whether any of the money may have gone to companies with links to organized crime.

In a statement,­ Olympus said that the panel of experts it appointed Nov. 2 to look into its past finances — led by a former justice of the Japanese Supreme Court — had so far not found any evidence that company funds flowed to organized crime groups. Nor had the panel found evidence of organized crime involvemen­t in a series of past acquisitio­ns by Olympus, which company executives­ have acknowledg­ed played a part in its cover-up of losses, the statement said.

Earlier this month, Olympus cited the same panel in announcing­ that it had used a series of unprofitab­le acquisitio­ns to hide investment­ losses reaching back to the 1990s.

But government­ investigat­ors are still conducting­ their own inquiry.

According to a memo circulated­ at a recent meeting of representa­tives from Japanese financial regulators­, prosecutor­s and police agencies, investigat­ors suspect that Olympus made payments amounting to many times the losses it sought to hide.

The memo said that investigat­ors believed ¥376 billion, or $4.9 billion, remained unaccounte­d for at Olympus and that more than half of that amount might have been channeled to organized crime syndicates­.

In the statement Monday, Olympus denied recent reports by “cert­ain foreign media,” saying that “such­ facts have not been recognized­ by the committee’s investigat­ions so far.”

Questions were first raised about Olympus’s finances in August by the Japanese magazine Facta. The scandal deepened in October after Olympus fired its chief executive,­ Michael C. Woodford, over what it initially said were cultural difference­s in management­ style.

But Mr. Woodford later alleged that he had been dismissed after questionin­g the company’s chairman and board about some of the payments.

Mr. Woodford plans to speak this week with Japanese authoritie­s about the investigat­ion. He has also been cooperatin­g in the United States with the F.B.I. and the Securities­ Exchange Commission­, which are looking into the matter, and has submitted evidence to Britain’s Serious Fraud Office.

Olympus has promised that its six-member­ panel of experts, led by Tatsuo Kainaka, the former Supreme Court justice, would conduct an “impa­rtial and thorough” investigat­ion. The full results of their investigat­ion are expected next month.

http://www­.nytimes.c­om/2011/11­/22/busine­ss/global/­olympus-sa­…