As we reported in an earlier bulletin, on 10 November, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) presented no evidence at a hearing in its case against Olympus Corporation ("Olympus") and its wholly owned UK subsidiary, Gyrus Group Ltd ("Gyrus"). This brought to an end the SFO's prosecution in respect of the accounting scandal which had engulfed the Olympus Group from late 2011.
The companies had been charged under s501(1) of the Companies Act 2006 with misleading Gyrus' auditors in respect of its 2009 and 2010 audit process, but a judgment at first instance, upheld on appeal, had ruled that s501(1) did not apply to the company itself under audit or its parent company, and that the criminal proceedings were "inevitably doomed as a matter of law".
In this briefing, our CCI team looks at the reasoning in the case, which may have implications for the approach taken to future matters, including those currently under investigation by the SFO.
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