TOKYO, Feb. 8, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In today's morning edition of the Asahi Shimbun, a report appears on the first and third pages regarding the transfer of $40 million dollars in connection with our company's Philippine business. The report states that "a board of directors' resolution states '[we] resolve to agree to and approve the payment of this expense', and is signed by Kazuo Okada, the UE chairman who also serves as a director of Aruze USA, and by Tomohiro Okada, a director of UE."
However, there are no such minutes properly processed and existing within Aruze USA.
As the parent company, our company would, of course, be aware of all documents concerning decisions at Aruze USA. Moreover, because of the involvement in the gaming business in the U.S., such documents must be filed with the NGCB (Nevada Gaming Control Board), but no such document has been filed.
First of all, in regards to this supposed "board of directors' resolution" said to have been created several months after the money transfer, our company has not been able to ascertain the provenance of this document, including how it came to be created, and we are at a total loss to understand how such a document could exist only in the possession of what is referred to in the published report as "an executive of the company involved with the creation of the minutes", and nowhere else.
Given this situation, the company is unable to produce to the 3rd Party Committee minutes that do not exist within the company, but since that committee is continuing its verification and such, which includes the decision-making process in our corporate group, our company intends to fully cooperate with that.
Note that the press report does not state anything such as the creation history of the minutes being described in internal documents. We have discovered evidence that, several months after the aforementioned money transfer, a former employee had the person in charge of drafting minutes create minutes that were clearly false, through the exchange of incomprehensible emails with this person.
Prior to today's press report, there was a fact inquiry from Asahi Shimbun.
A portion of that made reference to this document alleged to be a "board of directors' resolution", which our company cannot verify, so our company questioned the authenticity and provenance of this document, since it could not have existed under our company's management and control.
The Company believes that in addition to insinuating to our company's business partners that harm would occur by using real names in the reporting, Asahi Shimbun coerced our business partners into providing information in violation of confidentiality obligations. In our opinion, we cannot help but conclude that the improper reporting activities of the Asahi Shimbun reporter handling this matter are an excessive, systematic anti-social campaign. Accordingly, we are making an adamant protest and will also be considering taking various legal measures.
However, Asahi Shimbun went ahead with today's press report without even providing an answer to us regarding the above, so we cannot help but feel a sense of extreme distrust toward Asahi Shimbun's press coverage and attitude.