The Olympus Scandal - the whistleblowing story of Michael Woodford — Transcript

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1. 0:06I'm the former president and CEO of one
2. 0:10of Japan's largest corporations after
3. 0:13becoming the president within a few
4. 0:15weeks I received an email telling me
5. 0:18that my company had committed fraud
6. 0:20amounting to 1.7 billion dollars I had a
7. 0:23report from one of the world's largest
8. 0:25big four accountancy firms which was
9. 0:28damning I was the president asking the
10. 0:30most reasonable questions about
11. 0:32allegations of corporate malfeasance on
12. 0:34a dramatic skill and he wasn't even
13. 0:36answering my questions and I knew there
14. 0:38and then that this company of which you
15. 0:41know I was the president was rotten at
16. 0:44the core and then I knew that I had to
17. 0:47blow it open some way I had to blow this
18. 0:49thing no ministers and suddenly I
19. 0:52started to find that I was in the center
20. 0:54of a John Grisham novel where I was the
21. 0:55lead protagonist when I went back to
22. 0:57Tokyo there were 37 armed police
23. 0:59officers around me and had a ring of
24. 1:01steel I was convinced I was gonna expose
25. 1:03of massive white-collar crime the idea
26. 1:05that there could be people who might
27. 1:06want to hurt me or worse still hurt my
28. 1:08wife or my children you know I was
29. 1:10petrified and just tell me telling you
30. 1:13the story now I can feel my hands are
31. 1:14cold and clammy people have died for a
32. 1:17lot less than two billion dollars and I
33. 1:19was scared wouldn't you be