Universal says “no basis in fact” to reports Kazuo Okada is back on board

Japanese gaming entity Universal Entertainment Corporation has denied reports that former Chairman Kazuo Okada has wrestled back control of parent company Okada Holdings Ltd (OHL), adding that it “sincerely and solemnly accepted” the results of a recent special investigation that found Mr Okada guilty of fraud.

Reuters reported late last week that Mr Okada had reinstalled himself as a director of OHL after winning back the support of daughter Hiromi, who alongside Okada’s son Tomohiro and wife Takako voted him out in May. It also claimed he had written to the Universal board demanding a special shareholders’ meeting to install a new board that included him.

In a Monday statement, Universal said the Reuters report “has no basis in fact” and that “Mr Okada has not in fact legally acquired and maintained majority voting rights in OHL, including proxies to exercise voting rights in place of OHL shareholders, nor has he been reinstalled as a ‘representative’ or ‘director’ of OHL.” The company had also received no legal, valid demand to convene an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting from Mr Okada.

It was only two weeks ago that Universal released the findings of an investigative report by a Special Investigation Committee into allegations that Mr Okada had misappropriated company funds for his own benefit. The report found the company founder guilty of committing three acts of fraud, describing his actions as “an extreme intermingling of private and public affairs” which demonstrated “a lack of a sense of ethics that one should naturally have as a director of a listed company.”

Reaffirming its stance on Monday, Universal said it has “sincerely and solemnly accepted the Investigative Report obtained by the Special Investigation Committee from a professional and objective standpoint and submitted to the company by the committee on August 29, 2017.

“Based on said investigative results and measures to prevent the reoccurrence of the investigated acts as suggested by the committee, the company will formulate such measures in detail and proceed to execute them going forward.”

Source: Inside Asia Gaming