The president of Toshiba and seven other high-level executives and directors resigned on Tuesday over a $1.2 billion accounting scandal blamed on management's overzealous pursuit of profit that has battered one of Japan's best-known firms.
Hisao Tanaka and vice chairman Norio Sasaki -- also a former president -- stepped down after an independent report found senior management complicit in a years-long scheme to pad profits.
In a stinging indictment, the report by a company-hired panel said managers were involved in ‘systematically’ inflating profits over several years, in one of the most damaging accounting scandals to hit Japan in recent years.
“It has been revealed that there has been inappropriate accounting going on for a long time, and we deeply apologise for causing this serious trouble for shareholders and other stakeholders,’ said a company statement. Sasaki served as Toshiba president between June 2009 and June 2013, covering most of the period during which the company inflated the profits.
Chairman Masashi Muromachi will take over as president in the interim, the company said. The embarrassing findings come less than two months after the country adopted a long-awaited corporate governance code that backers hoped would usher in a new era of transparency for shareholders in Japanese firms.