Japan-listed gaming conglomerate Universal Entertainment Corp. has filed a HK$136.05 million (US$17.4 million) suit against former chairman Kazuo Okada.
In a disclosure to the Japan Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation (Jasdaq) on Thursday, the gaming firm said that the company, through its HongKong subsidiary Tiger Resorts Limited (TRA), filed the case before the High Court of the HongKong Special Administrative Region last December 27.
This is the second case that Universal has filed against Okada three months after the company discovered that the former chairman committed three fraudulent acts. The first case was filed on November 27 in the Tokyo District Court in Japan.
Universal said the company suffered damages due to Okada’s “negligence of duty as a board member of the company,” in connection with the casino mogul’s “fraudulent acts.”
In a nutshell, the new suit against Okada stemmed from the loans made to Goldluck Tech Limited and the unauthorized issuance of check from TRA. Universal claimed that between February and March 0f 2015, Okada used TRA to provide a HK$135 million (US$17.26 million) to Goldluck Tech Limited without requesting any collateral and without imposing any interest.
The company claimed that HKD 120.05 million (US$15.35 million) of the loan had not been recovered yet.
Universal alsoaccused Okada of instructing TRA’s person in charge of accounting to prepare a bearer check of HK$16 million (US$2.05 million) for “his personal gain.”
Universal launched its probe of Okada and Yoshinao Negishi, former director and general manager of Universal’s administrative division, in June due to suspicions that several directors of the company illegally released an estimated JPY2 billion (US$17.74 million) from a subsidiary without going through proper internal decision-making process.
The gaming company concluded its three-month probe into the multi-million dollar illegal fund outflows in September, with investigators declaring that the Japanese billionaire had committed fraud three times. Universal announced this week that the company has put up new measures to prevent a repeat of the incident.
“We added one outside director to beef up the oversight function of the board [of directors], which is now composed of seven directors, including as many as three outside directors,” the firm said.
