NEW YORK, USA — Japanese camera maker Olympus Corp. paid a group of obscure Cayman Islands-based companies almost $1 billion it spent on three start-up firms, according to internal documents and Cayman Islands records, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Three of the Cayman companies were dissolved or closed down in 2008 or 2009, shortly after receiving the money from Olympus, local corporate records show. The principals of the Cayman Islands companies couldn’t be determined.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Olympus wrote off about three-quarters of the value of the three start-ups as worthless, a year after the deals closed.
