Fuji Xerox New Zealand is issuing lawsuits against several former senior executives following the $450m ‘inappropriate accounting’ scandal that has rocked the company on both sides of the Tasman.

The execs are un-named as yet, but the list is unlikely to not include the so-called Mr A, cited by the independent Fujifilm report into the business as the prime protagonist in the scandal, and named by New Zealand MP Winston Peters as Neil Whittaker. He was the managing director of the New Zealand operation for 11 years, before his promotion to be managing director of the Australian business in May 2015, where he lasted for just over a year before a whistleblower finally convinced Fuji Xerox in Tokyo to take a proper look into the business.

[Related: Fuji Xerox sends Tokyo man to Sydney]

Whittaker resigned as managing director of the Australian business days after an unannounced audit into the company by regional HQ in Singapore took place. He received a $1m payout for his troubles.

Speaking to ProPrint last month in when he was Australia to apologise to its staff the  Fuji Xerox president Hiroshi Kurihara said legal advice was being taken following publication of the damning investigative report, which laid bare a culture of sales at any cost created under Whittaker’s tenure.

Now Fuji Xerox New Zealand, Fuji Xerox Finance, and parent shareholder, Fuji Xerox Asia Pacific, have filed civil proceedings in the High Court at Auckland against ‘former senior executives’ of Fuji Xerox New Zealand.

Isamu Sekine, Fuji Xerox Asia Pacific president and chief executive officer says, “Fuji Xerox is committed to resolving these past issues and ensuring they do not happen again.

“Customers can be confident that Fuji Xerox New Zealand is committed to running its business in a principled way and will continue to lead the market in the delivery of print, document management and business optimisation solutions."

[Related: Fuji Xerox bosses apologise to staff]

The full investigative report commissioned by parent company Fujifilm – and seen by ProPrint – reveals a local arm of a global corporation run as a virtual fiefdom, massive salaries and humungous commissions paid to top staff, including family members, with fabricated sales, made up monthly numbers, and a silencing of those questioning the recording of figures, compounded by a head office in Tokyo that was focused on its own issues, dazzled by the booked sales results in its subsidiary, and which at best ignored repeated warnings.

The translated 356 page report is the full version of the 89 page report released two months ago, and is damning expose, holding nothing back as it examines the consequences of what it says was a ‘sales at any cost’ culture.

It reads as an epic tale of a giant corporation with its eye off the ball outwitted for several years by a dominant personality and fabricated numbers in far off markets – New Zealand and latterly Australia.

Stand out revelations include 70 per cent of contracts having inappropriate revenue accounting, $30m of sales in 2015 simply made up, salaries – even before huge commissions were added – triple the industry average, the top salesman earning an eye watering $1.1m a year, of which $800,000 was incentives payments, and the son of the CEO earning $740,000 a year, of which more than half $420,000 was incentives. Losses to shareholder equity were $230m in New Zealand and $121m in Australia, after revenue was overstated by $450m.

The fall out from the scandal is immense and ongoing. Several of the Fuji Xerox top directors in Japan have been shown the door, including four of the  five senior executives – the chairman, deputy president, deputy vice president, and senior vice president – with the rest all taking a 20 per cent pay cut. Its auditors were sacked, sales have dipped and the company is in voluntary suspension from selling to New Zealand government bodies amidst a fraud investigation.

Neil Whittaker and chief salesman Dean Murray resigned following the unannounced audit from regional HQ, several senior Aussie staff including chief financial officer Devlin Bell and chief people officer Beth Winchester left shortly after. A number of long time senior staff in the production print division including national sales manager Mick Gillies, and long time staffer Sue Trelfo subsequently left the company.

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