Carlos Ghosn was the CEO of Nissan for 16 years. Suddenly, on November 19, 2018, he was arrested by Japanese authorities and held in prison. He was accused of mishandling and mismanaging finances. He was facing a very unfair and corrupt justice s…
Carlos Ghosn was the CEO of Nissan for 16 years. Suddenly, on November 19, 2018, he was arrested by Japanese authorities and held in prison. He was accused of mishandling and mismanaging finances. He was facing a very unfair and corrupt justice system in Japan and eventually, on 12/29/2019, he managed a daring escape to Labanon. He reportedly escaped, with the help of accomplices, by hiding in a box which was supposed to be used to hold a musical instrument. The box was loaded onto a private jet which went first to Istanbul and then to Beirut, Lebanon.
Soon after he was free in Lebanon he gave the press conference recorded in this video where he could finally tell his side of the story. In this press conference he explained that he was not a fugitive from justice. He was fleeing injustice. He said he is innocent of all the charges against him and that he is willing to be tried in court but not in Japan; he is willing to be tried in a country with a fair justice system. He said that the Japanese justice system has a 99.4% conviction rate, which means that defendants just don't stand a fair chance.
He said that when he was arrested he had no idea the charges were coming against him, that they were engineered by disgruntled executives at Nissan who were working with prosecutors to have him arrested and put away. He said the executives were upset because he was making changes at Nissan involving a merger with other car makers which would have put those executives under pressure by making them accountable for how well the company performs (i.e., for their job performance).
He said that for nine months he was not allowed to see his wife except for a single visit in which he was allowed to speak to her for only two hours and that a lawyer had to be present who would report back everything they talked about. Also, he said he was interrogated for up to 8 hours per day without any lawyers present. He said they kept telling him that if he would just confess to the allegations against him everything would be easier for him and that if he did not things would get worse. He also said that the prosecutors wrongly withheld important exculpatory evidence from him and they engaged in many acts of misconduct. He said they were doing many things to him to try to break him, to break his spirit and make him capitulate. But he did not break and he did not capitulate to them.
He addressed some of the charges against him. He said that he was accused of under-reporting his compensation (his income). But he pointed out that the amount in question had not yet even been approved by the board and that he had not even received it yet. He also discussed another sum he had been accused of misappropriating and he showed one or more documents (on a projection screen) showing that that sum had been signed off on by appropriate personnel at Nissan.
I personally have dealt with corrupt justice systems in the US and I empathize with his frustration with the Japanese justice system and applaud his daring escape, given all the circumstances here.
