Three top executives of Japan's Toshiba corporation have resigned in the wake of an accounting scandal that saw the company inflating its profits by $1.2 billion, according to Bloomberg. Leaving the company will its president, Hisao Tanaka, Vice Chairman Norio Sasaki and adviser Atsutoshi Nishida, said Bloomberg, all of whom took responsibility for the matter. An independent report named all three as having taken active roles in the practices that eventually produced more than a billion dollars worth of phantom profit, said the Wall Street Journal. The three were said to have set unrealistic profit targets for its various divisions, which encouraged inappropriate accounting practices in order to meet them, something that went unchecked due to a corporate culture that discouraged going against superiors' wishes, according to Reuters. These inappropriate procedures, then, became the de facto management policy, said the Journal. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will likely pursue penalties against the company due to these accounting irregularities, said the Journal.