When Michael Woodford rose to become the President of Olympus – he was the first foreigner to do so. Did he have any inkling of how soon he would turn from being the CEO to a whistleblower as he publicly exposed a $1.7 billion accounting fraud. He has survived to tell his hair raising tale in a new book – EXPOSURE. As I heard him tell us how he escaped Japan fearing for his life and how together with FT and the Serious Fraud Office he exposed the corporate culture in Japan, I was struck by the disparity between our image of Japan and the gory behind the scene activities that would be the ruination of Olympus, but more importantly the worldview of the country. The third largest economy in the world with global brands and corporations that have been a source of management lessons for western companies, this indeed comes as a shock. A culture of loyalty, a silent media and an active mafia hold corporate governance to ransom in Japan. It made often cited criticism against Indian public and family owned companies pale into insignificance.