Bandai Namco Holdings recently made a public announcement about misconducts committed by a now former employee of their Hong Kong subsidiary, Bandai Logipal (H.K.) Ltd. The employee is accused of embezzling approximately 500 million yen (roughly $3.38 million USD) between 2021 and 2023. This is the second case of embezzlement in the past few years within Bandai Namco, the first one being when a former employee resold over 4,400 company-owned mobile devices, embezzling approximately 600 million yen in the process.
As reported by ITMediaNews, Bandai Logipal conducted an internal investigation upon identifying some issues during an internal audit. They discovered that the said employee conspired with external business partners to embezzle company assets. The employee was laid off and arrested in January last year, immediately after it was found out that they were involved in embezzlement. A month after the arrest, the Hong Kong subsidiary commenced civil proceedings with the intention of filing a lawsuit against the employee in question.
Bandai Logipal Inc. (parent company of the Hong Kong subsidiary) took other disciplinary actions following the incident, including major pay deductions for the company officials. Apparently, 4 executives, including the company president and 3 full-time directors were subjected to a 30% pay deduction for 3 months in 2024. Additionally, two other full-time directors got a 15% pay deduction for the same period.
Furthermore, Bandai Logipal (H.K.) Ltd. promised to enhance awareness of Bandai Namco Group’s Code of Conduct and carry out certain changes to their flow of operations to prevent similar incidents from happening again. Bandai Logipal Inc. has also stated that they will establish a new department for supervising management of overseas subsidiaries. According to the document, the expected impact of the incident on Bandai Namco’s financial results for this fiscal year is minimal.
