explode

英語教育界では一時　時の人でしたが、控訴審にも敗訴して実刑が確定しました。
記事で面白いなと思ったのが、explodedでした。何となく意味はわかりますが、こういう用法はあるのでしょうか。Othelloくん、どうぞ。（UG）

PS 調査から一旦、もどりましたが、来週からはまた先般延期した山口、岡山へ行ってきます。Othelloくん、たのみますね。

Nova founder's 2-year prison sentence upheld

The disgraced founder of defunct English language school Nova has had his two-year jail term for embezzlement upheld, a court official in Japan said Thursday.

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Nozumu Sahashi, 61, who illegally took 320 million yen from employee benefit funds.

He gave the money to a Nova affiliate to reimburse students who had quit lessons for which they had paid in advance.
The amount was valued at roughly $2.97 million in 2008 at the time of Sahashi’s indictment, but is worth around $3.9 million today.

His sentence, originally imposed by Osaka High Court in 2010, will be formally imposed after logistical steps that require several days, said a Supreme Court official.

Nova was founded in 1981 and became an industry leader in a market that exploded over the following decade.

Foreigners with little or no language-teaching skills or experience were able to make a comfortable living teaching in Japan at the height of the 1980s economic boom and beyond.

Nova had an estimated 400,000 students and 6,000 employees on its books, 4,500 of them foreigners—many of them young people looking to spend a few years in Japan.

But it filed for protection from creditors in 2007 after the government ordered it to halt part of its operations over insufficient refunds for students.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/crime/view/nova-founders-2-year-prison-sentence-upheld