30 SECOND GUIDE TO ... JAPANESE SCANDALS

What was happened?

TOSHIBA, one of the best known consumer electronics brands, has been embroiled in a massive historical fraud scandal. The Japanese giant began an investigation into its past accounts, which this week laid out its damning evidence.

What did it say?

A panel of independent accountants and lawyers on Monday said company directors had presided over a ‘deliberate’ and ‘system- atic’ campaign to inflate profits at the firm. This amounts to an £800m accounting cover up that stretched back over seven years.

So what’s happened now?

Yesterday a slew of executives at the company – including the chief executive Hisao Tanaka and vice chairman Norio Sasaki, who was chief executive between 2009 and 2013 – have resigned. What’s more, the massive historic profits downgrade has seen the firm’s credit rating put at risk by ratings agency Standard & Poor’s.

Has this happened before?

it is reminiscent of a scandal that engulfed camera maker Olympus two years ago. The company had inflated profits by £1bn over a decade, but was only revealed when the firm’s British president Michael Woodford began asking questions after being contacted by a whistleblower. He was fired, and took the company to court. The affair blew the lid on a culture where junior employees were afraid to question authority.