TOKYO, June 21, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Following our announcement dated January 7th, 2013 titled the "Announcement Concerning the Resolution to Establish a Third Party Committee in Response to the Recent Media Reports about Our Business in the Philippines," in conjunction with a casino resort project in the Philippines to be developed by Universal and the affiliated companies, there were certain media reports which implicated that unjustifiable fund had been offered, among other things. We have decided to set up a third party committee consisting of attorneys and others who have no conflict of interest with Universal to confirm objective facts concerning the said case, as required by the guideline for a third-party committee formulated by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (dated July 15, 2010).
Upon the receipt of the investigation report from the third party committee dated June 21, 2013, we hereby wish to make a further announcement upon the content of it and our plan in the future.
For the full content of the investigation report from the third party committee, please see the "the Investigation Report (Summary) <http://www.universal-777.com/en/ir/releases/2013/20130621_e.pdf>". The report says;
- "the Freeh Report" is regarded lacking credibility,
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regarding the payment of 40 million dollars, it is concluded that
(i) Universal mistakenly paid 2.5 million dollars due to the lack of prompt and appropriate report on the road problem from the staff in charge of the Philippines project to the management of Universal. Therefore no evidence was found to implicate this payment be bribery
(ii) 10 million dollars was found to be a compensation for loss arranged by ex-employees by way of flow back of the fund; and
(iii) 5 million dollars payment was made without going through proper internal accounting procedure. However, the investigation up to date has not provided any evidence to prove bribery (currently an action is in progress as to this payment and the clarification of the facts must be made in accordance with its progress.)
It has become evident that, against the doubts expressed in certain media reports about an alarming amount of bribery offered by Universal, the alleged fact does not exist.
Although the investigation report by the third party committee concentrated on clarification of the factual relationships on the credibility of the Freeh Report and the payment of 40 million dollars, it also points out that Universal had governance problems which became source of the current issues.
We take seriously our short-comings of the internal regulations and corporate governance even before this investigation. Universal has worked on the systems to strengthen the management surveillance over the Overseas Business Division in the current issue (the third party committee pointed out that Universal governance did not cover this division) and had introduced company-wide electronic circular approval procedure thereby no expense can be paid without physically taking proper steps.
In addition, the third party committee proposed that Universal need to establish a compliance system covering the whole business of Universal. We firmly reconfirmed that we need to implement the above to develop our gaming business globally.
The investigation made it clear that there is no fact that Universal offered illegal fund. It also revealed that despite our governance problem, significant amount of fund was transferred in breach of the internal regulations by the employees in charge of arranging remittance. It also became clear that we were in a position of victims in a sense.
The cause of this problem is still not clear, even if there was a shortfall of our governance system, nor the intention of the employees in charge of remittance who breached the internal regulations nor their relationship with the third party outsider.
The third party committee announced to make further efforts to investigate and identify where the responsibility directly rests by appointing additional appropriate persons in charge of investigation. The investigation will continue in the future with further endeavors.