U.S. investigators, including the SEC, have asked to question former Olympus Corp. President Michael C. Woodford again in a federal probe of hundreds of millions of dollars in advisory fees paid by the Japanese company.  Woodford, the whistleblower was fired after he asked the Olympus board to review the payments made as part of acquisitions. Last month he met with FBI agents and prosecutors from the complex fraud unit of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, in New York, where he turned over documents that included a PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP report that he commissioned as president into the payments, according to the person, who didn’t want to be identified because the matter isn’t public. The next meeting with U.S. authorities, which may take place as early as this month, would be the first to involve investigators from the SEC. Regulators are interested because Olympus’s American depositary receipts are traded in the U.S., the person said. The request of Woodford may indicate a heightened interest by the U.S. government in Olympus after the company admitted last week that three executives colluded to hide losses from investors. The company first denied there was any wrongdoing involving $687 million in advisory fees paid on the $2 billion acquisition of Gyrus Group Plc in 2008, and later said it paid inflated fees to advisers to hide losses. Olympus also faces ongoing investigations in the U.K. and Tokyo. For more info, go to: [reuters 11/18/11]