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Tokyo: US investment bank Lehman Brothers was defrauded of about $242 million after it and other investors were caught in a scam in Japan, a newspaper reported on Saturday, with Japanese trading house Marubeni confirming some of its staff were involved.
Another daily, Asahi Shimbun, said Goldman Sachs was also among the investors, citing sources familiar with the issue. The full scale of the scam is not immediately known.
Lehman has some 24 billion yen ($242.1 million) outstanding as a result of the deal, which involved fake documents said to be from Japan's fifth-largest trading firm Marubeni Corp, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported its morning edition yesterday.
"Lehman is highly confident that it will recover all of its exposure," a Lehman Brothers source said on the condition of anonymity, but declined to comment on the amount.
Lehman's Japanese affiliate issued loans to a fund operated by medical consulting firm Asclepius Ltd, a unit of Japanese biotechnology company LTT Bio-Pharma Co.
The money was meant to go to hospitals and other institutions for equipment purchases, the newspaper said.
The US investment bank grew concerned when funds were not repaid at the end of February, the Nihon Keizai said, without citing sources.
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