UK fraud office hauls Olympus into court over accounting scandal

Re: Interesting in Japan they committed fraud to cover *lossess*

""most fraud is committed to cover losses" or hide profit."

Most serious "report & accounts" level fraud for listed comapnies is committed to hide a failure to meet expectations. Sometimes that's losses, but usually it is that profits have been made, but are below market expectations. I worked at director minus one level for a company that went down due to accounting fraud (and whose directors are serving porridge, even under the lax UK approach to fraud). Operating profits and turnover were growing, but not as fast as the market expected.

The problem then is that having missed one quarter or half year's targets and falsified the difference, it is most unlikely that you will neet the subsequent period's yet higher targets (and to do so honestly requires you to back fill the cash hole your fraud created in the frist case, so an even bigger ask). The fraud gets bigger, and very soon you're having to pay dividends on false profits, leading quickly to debt and solvency problems. Even if you don't have cash problems, when the cat is out the bag it usually triggers breach of covenant clauses, the banks want their loans repaid, and then you certainly do have cash problems.

Incidentally, corporate accounting fraud creates an opportunity for unscrupulous lenders (= all of them) to trigger a solvency crisis, and take an otherwise sound company out of the hands of the shareholders, and then re-sell it as a going concern, keeping all the loot for themselves. Not mentioning any particular thieving Scottish based bank, of course.