Lehman to sue Japan company in fraud claim

Lehman Bros. is accusing a Japanese trading company of perpetrating a massive fraud and plans to sue it for hundreds of millions of dollars, officials at the U.S. investment bank said Sunday.

Lehman seeks to recoup $350 million in defaulted loans, the company said.

The bank loaned the money to a unit of LTT Bio-Pharma, according to Matthew Russell, a senior spokesman for Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. The subsidiary, a medical consulting company, filed for bankruptcy protection March 19, leaving investors stuck with millions of dollars in outstanding loans.

Russell said that Japanese trading giant Marubeni Corp. secured the loans and should repay them. The company’s Japanese unit, Lehman Bros. Japan Inc., will file a civil suit today in Tokyo District Court, Russell said.

Marubeni said in a statement Saturday that it did not secure the loans and that documents to that effect were fake. It contends that it is also a victim of the alleged fraud and therefore should not have to cover any damages.

The company fired two of its employees after acknowledging that they may have collaborated with the fund’s managers to forge documents, according to the statement.

It added that Marubeni had filed a separate criminal complaint against the fund’s managers.