Olympus goes after its own directors

You'll remember last Fall when the whole Olympus accounting scandal came to light?  Olympus was using merger-related transaction fees to hide its nearly 2 decades of accounting shenigans.  It was only when Olympus' new CEO Michael Woodford started asking questions about the inexplicably large transaction fees that the whole thing fell apart. Now, Olympus has announced that it has filed suit in the Tokyo District Court against 19 current and past Olympus directors seeking more than 3.6 billion Yen (plus interest) in damages. That's about $45 million. That's not much, given the amount of damage caused to Olympus by the accounting scandal.  According to Reuters, the internal investigation panel recommended seeking 90 billion Yen ($1.17 billion) in damages from the directors. Even in Japan I don't think D&O insurance covers accounting fraud.

Olympus expects all the current directors who have been sued to resign at the next shareholder meeting in April 2012. 

-bjmq