Former Nissan and Renault boss Carlos Ghosn has said that he escaped house arrest in Japan and fled to Lebanon “to escape injustice”.
The 66-year-old, who holds French, Lebanese and Brazilian nationalities, had been detained by Japanese authorities since his arrest in 2018 on financial misconduct charges relating to his time running Nissan. But in December last year he escaped house arrest and is now in Beirut.
In an interview with The Sunday Times to promote his new book, Ghosn detailed his outlandish escape, which included being smuggled onto a private plan hidden in a music speaker case. He told the paper that he took the “huge risk” because he wanted to fight injustice.
He said: “There’s a good phrase in English that says, ‘When you’re living in hell, keep walking.’ I was living in hell. There was endless interrogation in jail, without lawyers. They said if I did not confess they’d target my family. I was not allowed to see [his wife] Carole or my children. I would have faced a trial that would have lasted at least five years, with everyone reminding me that the Japanese prosecutors had a 99.4% conviction rate. I had to walk — not to escape justice but to escape injustice.”
Ghosn continued to proclaim his innocence in the interview, saying that the charges were brought by Nissan executives in order to stop him from potentially pushing through a full merger with Renault.
He said that they wanted “to put me completely out of the picture — that meant putting me in jail”. He added: “Japan has become nationalistic. There was talk about the ‘re-Japanisation’ of Nissan.”
In a statement, Nissan told The Sunday Times that it “carried out a robust and thorough internal investigation that included external lawyers” that had uncovered “substantial and convincing evidence” that Ghosn had “intentionally committed serious misconduct”.
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Who is Carlos Ghosn and why is this saga going to run and run?
Carlos Ghosn trashes Nissan and Japanese legal system, reaffirms innocence
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Guilt By Association
Autocar promotes a Sunday Times article promoting a criminal's new book. One day this snake will eat itself.
He's still banging on about the 99.4% conviction rate as if that's some magical cloak of innocence for him. What scumbags like Ghosn never state is that it's 99.4% of the 32% of cases that actually make it to court, in a country that famously has a low crime rate. 56% of cases never do get to court. Prosecutors don't even try in more than half of cases. Not because there's insufficient evidence per se, but the system is based on "better to let 100 guilty go free than have 1 innocent suffer in jail", so they focus resources where they believe they have a nailed down conviction (contrast with UK where a 51% likelihood of conviction is often good enough). That doesn't excuse prosecutorial methods, of course, though they are not a secret and are widely written about, but the hypocrisy surrounding this case does amuse me. The worst thing, however, is that with only 32% of cases making it to court there's a large group of victims in Japan that never get justice. Often women, victims of domestic violence, but they don't have the resources of Ghosn to pursue justice in the way that he uses his resources to flee it.
This lack of justice should be the only headline, not Ghosn's self-serving whining. As for the "famous English saying" it was Churchill that said "If you're going through hell, keep going". Churchill was referring to perseverance in the face of adversity, not running away like a coward. But Ghosn is such a vain narcissist he'd probably go to his grave insisting his interpretation is correct.
Ironic that he chose to swap his version of "hell" with Lebannon, a place where he's more likely to be shot in the face than have any significant jail time in Japan
100% correct, carlos should face justice for his crimes in Japan
Yes I HATE the jingoistic xenophobic verging on racist portrayal of Japan in all of this, obviously all done at behest of carlos crisis management team who are paid to seed stories like this to the media to brainwash us.
Unlike this dump country Japans crime levels is almost non existent, heck car crashes and road rage are shown on the news because of the lack of murders and life changing crimes to report..
so this is why there is a near 99% conviction rate because of the low serious crime per capita the investigators are not stretched investigating a 1000 cases so can invest a huge amount of resources investigating crimes collecting the iron clad evidence needed to hand to the prosecutors.
So no unlike carlos xenophobic dog whistles They are not torturing him in solitary confinement for confession or ordered the Yakuza to assassinate him .
Lets cut the bs here everyone, carlos is guilty, fled the country and used his massive wealth to pay pr crisis firms to flood western media with victim stories to change the narrative painting him as a persecuted political prisoner.
I am Disgusted how the rich like carlos NEVER face justice for $40m+ financial fraud and equally disgusted how they pull the ‘no justice in Japan’ card and flee when they are caught whilst Julian Assange is rotting in prison for doing nothing more than publishing reports documenting US war crimes and corruption ..
Whilst we'll probably never
Yawn, STOP printing the bigot anti-japan myths and lies
I find your ignorant broad false stereotypes in regards Japanese law coming from someone who lives in a nation where Julian Assange is held in isolation , strip searched, tortured and facing decades in prison for disclosing US war crimes as a reporter..
Looks like disgraced ex Nissan ceo carlos is paying his pr crisis management team an extra 100k to seed more pr friendly victim stories in the media similar to what Harvey Weinstein did..
autocar MAYBE you should do REAL research and not copy paste press releases from he legal team which will paint this justice dodging criminal as a saint..
yes Japan can be a bureaucratic red tape nightmare but lets cut the bs this ISNT a conspiracy from the ‘evil’ Japanese to enact revenge and harm poor foreigner carlos , unlike this joke country with high crime rates and financial tax dodging is the norm for the rich Japan is different the Japanese authorities Never bring cases forward unless it is a slam dunk prosecution with iron clad evidence .
So its pretty clear that he has engaged in huge financial fraud such as under reporting his taxable income, receiving kickbacks giving huge lucrative Nissan/Infiniti parts contracts to his friends without board approval and so on. This is a common defence for foreign criminals fleeing Japan using the xenophobic racist “no justice in evil Japan” or “or I have to flee because the yakuza mafia ninja named harry kiri is going to kamikaze me” line to avoid justice, apparently rich foreigners in Japan are above justice(!)
Michael Christopher Woodford did the SAME thing when he almost bankrupted Olympus due to his financial scams whist ceo there so this is becoming a common trend in Japan, actually its a good gig if you can get it, conspire in huge financial fraud, flee the country when you are caught, profit!
Long story short WTF are the Japanese still employing foreigner ceos because all they do is asset strip and run the companies in to the ground!? They managed very well to be a global leader from zero in aftermath of WWII US fire bombing wooden home’d Tokyo and nuclear holocaust without them so why the change in the 00’s? To look ‘progressive’ and all inclusive with an exotic token ‘western’ ceo?
Toyota is doing it right, bootlicking foreigners never get into the inner circle upper management CEO positions and no surprise that Toyota motor group is the Number one car manufacturer on the planet.
Long story short
Japanese companies should never hire window dressing foreigner ceos ,
Japanese police should've placed carlos in prison NOT home arrest because its worrying how he could easily escape from a national security point of view.
Autocar STOP printing his legal teams propaganda and do your own research, he is clearly guilty of financial crimes when ceo of Nissan and fled justice NOT a persecuted innocent virgin...
Rimmler!
That's actually an intelligent and thoughtful post. What happened?
Idiot
BlahBlah43 wrote:
I'm not sure if Lebanon is concerned about international diplomacy and reputational damage.
No extradition treaty