Toshiba to pay $59.8 million for their accounting violations

Japan's Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission recommended that Toshiba should be fined a record-breaking 7.37 billion yen or $59.8 million for their accounting scandal, the biggest fine in Japan history.

Toshiba admitted that they overstated their seven-year profit by 155 billion yen or $1.9 billion. According to The Wall Street Journal, although the fine recommendation is yet to be approved by Japan's Financial Services Company, Toshiba already set aside 8.4 billion yen to pay for the penalties.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has looked on attracting foreign investors to Japanese companies and asked the latter to increase their accountability to shareholders in order for that to happen. A new corporate governance code, which urged companies to appoint more outside directors, went into effect earlier this year.

Toshiba responded to the Prime Minister's call by reshuffling its management. Three of its chief executives stepped down and indicted along with two more other officials. Toshiba is seeking 300 million yen in damages after their private investigating panel found out that over aggressive management targets contributed to the overstatement.

According to Yahoo Finance, Toshiba has set a third party probe to investigate its own accounting practices, but it was given a failed grade by influential lawyer who said the insufficiently independent committee has not investigated a key division.

Although the fine that the industrial and electronics conglomerate is less compared to the penalties that US companies have to pay over the same violation, the watchdog's recommended fine is the largest ever in Japan and it exceeds the 2008 record of 1.6 billion yen paid by industrial conglomerate IHI Corp, according to Nikkei Asian Review.

"This is a grave incident, whose impact is large," said Kiyotaka Sasaki, the secretary general at the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission (SESC).

The country is wrought with corporate scandals and Toshiba's crisis is just another blow to the government's efforts to attract global investors. Ever since it admitted its overstatement, Toshiba stocks fell forty percent.