Disgraced Renault boss Ghosn fights back, set on restoring reputation

Carlos Ghosn, the former auto industry superstar whose career ground to a halt with his arrest on fraud charges in Japan three years ago, has told the Associated Press news agency that he isn't about to settle into quiet retirement. 

Ex-Renault and Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn in Beirut, Lebanon, in June 2021. © Mohamed Azakir/Reuters

Despite fleeing to Lebanon in late 2019 while on bail facing financial misconduct charges in Japan, Ghosn appeared confident, energised and determined to fight to restore his reputation.

“I’m going to be there. I’m going to defend my rights as long as I have the energy to do it,” the 67-year-old told AP via Zoom from his home in Beirut. His story is “far from finished,” he added.

The Brazilian-born Ghosn, who is French, fled Japan concealed in a cargo container on board a private jet. He took refuge in Lebanon, his ancestral homeland, which has no extradition treaty with Japan.

Ghosn said he is trying to get Interpol to drop its "Red Notice", which requests police worldwide to seek out and arrest persons wanted for prosecution or to serve a sentence. He's eager to be able to travel outside Lebanon, but the process is likely to be bureaucratically complicated and long. 

“I don’t want them to get away with it, frankly. I’m the most passionate about this story,” Ghosn told me. My @AP Story today:https://t.co/bRzC4jRTJn

— Yuri Kageyama (@yurikageyama) October 22, 2021

Japanese pursuit

Japanese prosecutors say they are still intent on pursuing him on allegations of under-reporting his compensation and of breach of trust in misusing Nissan money for personal gain — charges he denies. 

Japan has extradition treaties with the US and South Korea, and prosecutors have said they would seek help from other countries, including Brazil and France, if Ghosn travels there. 

Apart from the main case in Japan, Ghosn is under investigation in France and is being sued by Nissan Motors in Japan for alleged financial damages.

Tokyo prosecutors have refused to send his files to Lebanon for the criminal case to be tried there. Nissan also conducted its own internal investigation, which concluded that Ghosn "intentionally committed serious misconduct".

This screengrab from the Interpol website shows the "Red Notice" where Carlos Ghosn, "wanted by Japan" is charged with financial crimes. © Screengrab Interpol

Nissan’s French alliance partner Renault sent Ghosn to Japan in 1999 to steer a turnaround when the Japanese automaker was on the verge of collapse. Under Ghosn, Nissan became more profitable than Renault.

The partnership expanded to include smaller rival Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and other automakers. Nissan owns 15 percent of Renault, which owns a much bigger 43 percent of Nissan. The French government owns 15 percent of Renault. 

Analysts estimate the damage suffered by the Nissan-Renault alliance over the Ghosn scandal at billions of dollars in capital value, sales and brand image. Nissan expects to eke out a profit this fiscal year after losing money for the past two years. 

Aaron Ho, analyst at New York-based CFRA Research, believes Nissan has fallen behind in an intensely competitive industry because of the Ghosn scandal. 

The Renault plant is pictured Friday, May 29, 2020 in Choisy-le-Roi, outside Paris. Struggling French carmaker Renault announced 15,000 job cuts worldwide as part of a 2 billion euros cost-cutting plan over three years. The cost-cutting plan comes as Renault came into the virus crisis in particularly bad shape. Its alliance with Nissan and Mitsubishi is a major global auto player but has struggled since the 2018 arrest of its longtime star CEO Carlos Ghosn. AP - Christophe Ena

'Thugs' inside Nissan

“Before Nissan resolves its internal issues over corporate power and puts its resources back into making tangible progress — which takes a lot of time, and a lot of time has been wasted — to create values for its end demand, we are not optimistic,” he said. 

Ghosn asserts the case against him was concocted because of a power struggle within Nissan’s boardroom.

He says he wants to show “a conspiracy” by Nissan officials who, worried about a merger with Renault, got Japanese authorities to pursue a criminal case against him. There were thugs inside Nissan, he added. 

Nissan, which has denounced Ghosn, does not comment on the case. 

A man walks past Nissan Motor Co.'s global headquarters in Yokohama, near Tokyo, Tuesday, June 22, 2021. Nissan Chief Executive Makoto Uchida pleaded for patience from disgruntled shareholders Tuesday, promising a turnaround at the Japanese automaker, which is projecting a third year of losses as it struggles to distance itself from a scandal over its former Chairman Carlos Ghosn. AP - Koji Sasahara

Testimony at the trial of Greg Kelly, a former top executive at Nissan Motors, who was arrested at the same time as Ghosn, has shown that Nissan officials did alert prosecutors. 

The case against Ghosn and Kelly centres on elaborate calculations to compensate Ghosn after retirement for a pay cut he took in 2009, when disclosure of big executive pay became a legal requirement in Japan.

Prosecutors allege Ghosn broke the law by failing to report that compensation, which was never paid or even formally agreed upon. Kelly says he is innocent, and was trying to find legal ways to pay Ghosn to retain him. 

Ironically, Ghosn says the money he allegedly failed to report was based on him retiring in 2018, the year he was arrested. 

Broken Alliances

Ghosn looks anything but retired. He’s working on movies, teaching classes on management, consulting for businesses and helping out with university research on “character assassination”. 

“Look. Books, books, books,” he said, when asked what else he's been working on. 

Broken Alliances, an English version of the 2020 French book Le temps de la verite, was released in September. He is writing a book with his wife Carole, who also is wanted in Japan, about their ordeal. 

"Broken Alliances" © book cover

Human rights advocates and other critics say Japan's judicial system amounts to “hostage justice,” allowing suspects to be questioned for days without a lawyer present while they are kept in solitary confinement in a spartan cell.

The conviction rate of over 99 percent has raised questions over forced confessions. 

And in December 2020, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions announced in a 17-page report that "the deprivation of liberty of Carlos Ghosn" was "in contravention" of several articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

• Renault shares plunge as Ghosn arrest shakes investors

The body asked the Government of Japan "to take the steps necessary to remedy the situation of Ghosn without delay and to bring it into conformity with the relevant international norms."  

“One of the things I could do for Japan is fighting with all those people who are opposed in Japan to the hostage justice system,” said Ghosn.

His still drives a Nissan, the Patrol sport-utility vehicle, a model he worked on that’s popular in the Middle East. And he insists there was no way he could have foreseen the trouble that was headed his way. 

“If somebody was telling you before it happened that I was going to be arrested,” he said, “you would laugh. You would say, ‘Come on. It is a joke’.” 

(With AP)