The New York Times has a report out Friday on the expanding investigation into whether optics giant Olympus's scandal over missing billions has connections to the yakuza. Hiroko Tabuchi obtained a memo from Tokyo police and prosecutors that was given to officials from the Japan's Securities and Exchange Commission in which investigators said, "they are trying to determine whether Olympus worked with organized crime syndicates to obscure billions of dollars in part investment losses and then paid then exorbitant sums for their services." The memo confirms and elaborates on The Atlantic Wire's Jake Adelstein's reporting last week that Tokyo police had opened an investigation into the possibility of "breach of trust, falsifying securities reports, [and] violations of the organized crime countermeasures laws."

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