Toshiba detects more accounting errors, promises improvement

Japan’s Toshiba Corp disclosed additional accounting irregularities on Tuesday after a multi-billion dollar accounting scandal last year, renewing doubts over the company’s pledge to improve transparency.

The laptops-to-nuclear conglomerate said it had overstated past profits by 5.8 billion yen ($51.30 million) on a pretax basis due to seven new accounting errors, on top of the 224.8 billion in overstated profits it has already announced.

Toshiba said the company had treated the additional errors as losses in financial reports for two quarters through December, but had not publicly announced them because the amount was below the threshold requiring regulatory disclosure.

The company “lacked awareness for appropriate disclosure”, a Toshiba spokeswoman said.

Fixing responsibilities for the latest errors, Toshiba said it had “punished” 40 more employees, in addition to 26 which it said previously had been punished. The company has not specified what form the punishment has taken.

Source: Reuters