by Julia La Roche — finance.yahoo.com — Former Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn slammed the Japanese justice system during his first public appearance since fleeing the country. “I did not escape justice. I fled injustice and persecution, political persecution,” Ghosn said at a press conference in Beruit, Lebanon on Wednesday. “You’re going to die in Japan or you’ve got to get out.” During his speech, he described how he was “brutally taken” from his world as he knew it on the day of his arrest in Japan in November 2018. “I have not experienced a moment of freedom since November 19, 2018. It is impossible — it is impossible to express the depth of that deprivation and my profound appreciation to once again be able to be reunited with my family and loved ones,” Ghosn said. The high-profile auto executive was arrested in November 2018 at the airport in Tokyo on allegations of under-reporting his compensation and misusing company funds. “These allegations are untrue and I should have never been arrested in the first place,” he said. Ghosn, who has maintained his innocence and called the charges against him “baseless,” said his treatment by the Japanese judicial system was a “travesty against his human rights and dignity.” While enduring this “nightmare” imprisonment, Ghosn said his only contact with friends and family was through letters his attorneys showed him through a looking glass.
He added that he spent 130 days in detention and upon being granted bail the first time he sought to share his side of the story only to be “thrown back in solitary confinement within 24 hours.” He called this “confinement that flies in the face of global and United Nations standards of justice.” Ghosn escaped Japan to Lebanon on December 30. However, he said he was “not here today to talk about how I l managed to leave Japan, although I can understand that you are interested in that. I’m here to talk about why I left.”
He emphasized that he wants to have his name vindicated and his reputation restored after the 400 days of “inhumane treatment.” He also called the decision to leave Japan the “most difficult” of his life and a risk one takes when they will be subjected to an “unfair trial.” A majority of his speech focused on the Japanese legal system, which he described as “indifferent” to the truth, fairness, civil liberties, and accepted norms of justice. Ghosn said the “unimaginable ordeal” he went through was because of “a handful of unscrupulous, vindictive individuals” at Nissan and the Latham & Watkins law firm.
In a statement released this week, Nissan called Ghosn’s escape to Lebanon “extremely regrettable.” The automaker said it “discovered numerous acts of misconduct by Ghosn through a robust, thorough internal investigation” and that he was “not fit to serve as an executive.” “The internal investigation found incontrovertible evidence of various acts of misconduct by Ghosn, including misstatement of his compensation and misappropriation of the company’s assets for his personal benefit. The consequences of Ghosn’s misconduct have been significant. In addition to his prosecution in Japan, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission concluded that Ghosn’s conduct, including his schemes to underreport his compensation, was fraudulent. Investigations in France concerning possible misconduct are still ongoing. Nissan will continue to do the right thing by cooperating with judicial and regulatory authorities wherever necessary,” Nissan said in a statement. –
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Former Nissan-Renault boss Carlos Ghosn said on Wednesday he had not initially paid to hold a family party in the grounds of the sumptuous Versailles Palace because he thought the palace was offering him the use of the venue for free. Ghosn, who last month escaped to Lebanon from Japan where he was on bail awaiting trial, is under a separate investigation in France to establish if the party at the 17th century palace was a financial benefit that he obtained improperly. Speaking at his first news conference since his November 2018 arrest in Japan, Ghosn said he had believed the use of the grounds of the opulent venue was a “commercial gesture” from the palace in return for Renault’s sponsorship of renovations. Ghosn said he was later surprised to learn that the use in October 2016 of the Grand Trianon building, located in the grounds of Versailles Palace, was billed to Renault. “Catherine Pegard, who is the head of Versailles, told me ‘Mr Ghosn you are a big benefactor, you know from time to time for our big friends we can make rooms available. If you have a private party, we can make rooms available’. I say thank you very much.”
Calls to Pegard’s office at the Public Establishment of the Palace, which runs Versailles, went unanswered. Months after his contact with Pegard, Ghosn said he decided to host his wife Carole’s 50th birthday at the palace. The event was organized by a company, he said. Ghosn presented a document at the Beirut press conference that he said showed the organizers had listed the cost of renting the building as “zero euros”. “So you know, when I see this I say ‘it’s a commercial gesture’.” He described his surprise to later learn the fee was 50,000 euros and had been deducted from what he called “the credit Renault earns from being a sponsor of Versailles.”
“We said ‘ok, we’re ready to pay’,” Ghosn said. “We thought in good faith this was a kind of commercial gesture.” The French probe was launched after Renault said in February 2019, three months after Ghosn’s arrest in Japan, that it had found evidence in an internal probe that it had footed some of the costs of the celebration. Ghosn said that if France’s legal authorities wanted to speak to him, he was willing to talk to them. Asked what he was seeking from the French authorities, he said: “Nothing.” He added that he expected that the presumption of innocence would be respected in France.
Ghosn regrets not accepting US offer to lead GM for double his salary
Former Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn on Wednesday denied all allegations of wrongdoing while leading the Japanese automaker, but he did admit to making at least one mistake during his prominent career. Ghosn, during a more than two-hour news conference in Lebanon, said he regrets not entertaining an offer by the Obama administration to become CEO of General Motors in 2009. “I made mistake. I recognize it today,” Ghosn said as part of his first public comments since his November 2018 arrest in Japan and escape last week to Lebanon. “I should have accepted the offer, but I had my beliefs.” Obama auto czar Steven Rattner, as detailed in his 2010 book “Overhaul” about the government’s auto industry bailout, asked Ghosn if he would “be interested” in leading America’s largest automaker. Ghosn said Rattner offered him double his salary to lead GM, however Ghosn was committed to heading the Nissan-Renault Alliance, which in preceding years had separately been in talks with the Detroit automaker as well as then-Chrysler to potentially join the alliance.
Ghosn, who simultaneously led three automakers as part of the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi alliance, on Wednesday used the example to illustrate why the depiction of him as a “cold, greedy dictator” in the Japanese media was unfair. “This is not a greedy guy talking. A greedy guy would say, ‘Sorry guys, this is business. I’m going to go for my own interest.’” Ghosn said, adding the offer was “very attractive” but the captain of the ship doesn’t leave the ship” when it’s in need. Rattner, who was not immediately available for comment, wrote that he knew Ghosn’s acceptance of the position was a “long shot” and that he “was not surprised when he deftly demurred.” Ghosn was awaiting trial in Japan since his November 2018 arrest on charges of financial misconduct and misuse of corporate resources for personal gain when he fled the country last week. He has denied any wrongdoing and said he secretly fled to Lebanon, where he has citizenship, “not to escape justice,” but “injustice.”
During the wide-ranging news conference on Wednesday, Ghosn also mentioned discussions with Fiat Chrysler to join the global auto alliance, including merger talks with Fiat Chrysler Chairman John Elkann. Those talks, after Ghosn’s arrest, eventually fell apart and Fiat Chrysler finalized its deal last month to merge with French automaker PSA Group, a major competitor of Renault. “It is unbelievable,” Ghosn said in response to the deal, citing under his leadership the alliance “had a clear vision for the future,” unlike today. “How can you lose that? How can you lose this opportunity to become the dominant player in this industry?” In June, it was reported a deal between Fiat Chrysler and Renault fell apart due to concerns raised by the French government about the tie-up.
Ghosn: Seeds of Renault-Nissan crisis were sown by Macron’s move
PARIS (Reuters) – Ex-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn said on Wednesday that a surprise corporate move, orchestrated five years ago by French President Emmanuel Macron who was then economy minister, soured relations between Renault and Nissan and contributed to his ouster. Ghosn, the former head of the car alliance, said Nissan executives and Japanese officials were shocked by a 2015 decision by the French government to increase its voting rights at Renault. “This left a big bitterness. Not only with the management of Nissan, but also the government of Japan,” Ghosn told reporters, although he did not name Macron. “And this is where the problem started.”
Macron’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story. In April 2015, as a 37-year-old minister with then-unknown presidential ambitions, Macron ordered a rise in the state’s stake in Renault here designed to secure double voting rights. The overnight move gave the French state a blocking minority in Renault, which in turn controlled Nissan via its 43.4 percent stake in the Japanese firm. According to French and Japanese sources, that rattled the Japanese side of the Renault-Nissan alliance, which feared a national champion was falling under the control of the French government. In the ensuing eight-month boardroom fight between Macron’s ministry and Hiroto Saikawa – Nissan’s second-in-command at the time – Ghosn sees the seeds of the Franco-Lebanese executive’s downfall. The 65-year-old fled Japan last month as he awaited trial on charges of under-reporting earnings, breach of trust and misappropriation of company funds, all of which he denies. He is now in Lebanon, where he spoke to international media on Wednesday. “There started to be some kind of defiance from our Japanese colleagues, not only about the alliance but also about me,” Ghosn told a news briefing. “And some of our Japanese friends thought: the only way to get rid of the influence of Renault on Nissan is to get rid of him,” he added. “Unfortunately, they were right.” He said that, partly because of the mistrust caused by the 2015 row, he had doubts about the future of the alliance.
Asked if he felt let down by the French government’s muted response to his arrest, Ghosn replied: “How would you have felt in my place? Supported? Defended? Let down? I don’t know. I won’t state a view for now. “I am a French citizen like any other. I’m not asking to be treated better than anyone else, but I shouldn’t be treated less well than others either. “When the French president says ‘presumed innocent’, I believe him. But when French officials say ‘presumed innocent’ and have a body language that says ‘he is guilty’, I don’t agree with that,” Ghosn said.
Reporting by Michel Rose; editing by Mike Collett-White Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
