Posted on 06/16/2005 9:48:34 AM PDT by ambrose
Forbes ex-world’s richest man jailed in Japan
AFP
Posted online: Thursday, June 16, 2005 at 1252 hours IST
TOKYO, JUNE 16: Former rail and real-estate magnate Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, who was considered the world's richest man at the height of Japan's economic miracle in the late 1980s, pleaded guilty today to charges of insider trading in his fallen empire.
"Facts are as stated," Tsutsumi, 71, told the Tokyo District Court during his first court hearing in the case that could land him in prison.
"I feel seriously responsible as the man who led the Seibu Group. I am sorry," Tsutsumi, wearing a dark suit, said with little emotion.
Tsutsumi has been charged with falsifying financial statements to conceal his family control over a listed rail firm and with insider trading for orchestrating the sale of shares in the now de-listed Seibu Railway.
The man who took over the family business in 1965 at age 31 resigned in October as head of all of the group's companies as the scandal came to light although he was widely seen as still influential behind the scenes.
Tsutsumi's father, Yasujiro, bought up property as Japan rebuilt from the ruins of World War II. Yoshiaki was named the world's richest man by Forbes magazine for four years until 1990, when his fortune was put at $16 billion.
By 2004, he had fallen to 159th with just three billion dollars to his name as Japan's 'bubble economy' of the 1980s and his empire crumbled.
I read that headline and first thought that Forbes was jailed and I wondered: Why was Forbes jailed in Japan and exactly when he was the richest man in the world?
Just goes to show that first impressions are not necessarily correct.
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