Carlos Ghosn, the ousted chairman of Nissan, with his daughters Nadine, left, and Caroline. He also has another daughter, Maya, and a son, Anthony.Ghosn Family
Mr. Ghosn in 1996 with, from left, Caroline, Anthony, Maya and Nadine. The family was living in Greenville, S.C., at the time, but the children consider Tokyo their hometown.Ghosn Family
Anthony, Nadine and Caroline, right, with their father in Tennessee in 2015. Referring to his life in a jail cell, Caroline Ghosn said, “Every detail we learn is heartbreaking.”Ghosn Family
by nytimes.com — By Amy Chozick — The children of Carlos Ghosn, the jailed auto executive who oversaw an alliance that sold more than 10 million cars a year, believe accusations of financial misconduct against him are part of a revolt within Nissan against exploring a possible merger with Renault. Caroline Ghosn, the eldest of Mr. Ghosn’s four children, said that when she saw Hiroto Saikawa, the chief executive of Nissan, condemn her father during a televised news conference after his arrest, she suspected that Nissan’s investigation was rooted in opposition to proposed changes to the Nissan-Renault alliance and “the merger my dad was setting up.” “For Saikawa to so adamantly denounce someone who had been his mentor and then immediately without any benefit of the doubt condemns him?” Ms. Ghosn, 31, said in a phone interview. An entrepreneur, she had awakened hours before that briefing to the news that her father, who was Nissan’s chairman and Renault’s chief executive, had been arrested on suspicion of violating Japan’s financial reporting laws. She and her sister Maya Ghosn, 26, do not have direct knowledge of their father’s business discussions, but both said watching Mr. Saikawa address the national news media had cemented their belief that internal company dynamics were at play.
Mr. Saikawa told the reporters that one problem with the alliance was that “the top of Renault is concurrently serving as the top of Nissan with 43 percent of shares.” In the future, he said, the company would “look for a more sustainable structure.” “Wow,” Caroline Ghosn said. “He didn’t even waste a breath. He didn’t even try to cover up the fact that the merger had something to do with this.” Maya Ghosn, who works in philanthropy, agreed. As Mr. Saikawa was “talking about the alliance, it was clear to me that there was way more associated with it,” she said. “My gut reaction was that this was bigger than the accusations against my dad.” The interviews were the first time since the arrest that the sisters, now living in San Francisco, have spoken publicly about their father, who was deposed as chairman of the board of Nissan after creating an empire that included Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi.
Mr. Ghosn, 64, was arrested on Nov. 19 as he arrived in Tokyo for a board meeting. He was later charged with underreporting his compensation for several years in securities filings and has been detained in Tokyo. Nissan’s internal investigation of what it calls “substantial and convincing evidence of misconduct” has taken on global dimensions, encompassing teams of compliance people who have tried to secure potential evidence at residences used by Mr. Ghosn, including an apartment in Rio de Janeiro. “Our own investigation is ongoing, and its scope continues to broaden,” the company said in a statement Friday, suggesting that Mr. Ghosn’s legal problems could deepen. His family maintains he is innocent. Like Mr. Ghosn, Greg Kelly, a Nissan board member, was indicted on financial misconduct changes. Nissan was indicted, too, and said it would review its compliance procedures. Asked to respond to the Ghosn daughters’ claims — that animosity about a potential merger drove Nissan’s investigation — Nicholas Maxfield, a company spokesman, said: “These claims are baseless. The family would never have had any reason to be privy to discussions related to the future of Nissan and the alliance.” “The cause of this chain of events is the misconduct led by Ghosn and Kelly,” Mr. Maxfield said. “During the company’s internal investigation into this misconduct, the prosecutor’s office began its own investigation and took action.” (Asked specifically whether a merger had been discussed, Mr. Maxfield said a previously announced six-year plan had called for “additional synergies and further convergence among the member companies.”)
Mr. Ghosn has remained in a small jail cell without the opportunity for bail since his arrest. “That first night, I thought my dad was going to come back within 24 hours,” Maya Ghosn said. “In the U.S. you get held for a short period of time. At least, that was my experience watching ‘Billions,’” a Showtime drama about an embattled hedge fund billionaire. Mr. Ghosn’s family said his fall from grace in Japan, a nation that once celebrated the Brazilian-born son of Lebanese immigrants as a savior, and where his children spent their formative years, had been particularly hard to fathom. In 1999, Mr. Ghosn, then a vice president at Renault, arrived in Tokyo and applied American-style restructuring to a failing Nissan. He accomplished what Wall Street analysts deemed impossible — reviving Nissan and making it the No. 2 carmaker in Japan. The turnaround enshrined Mr. Ghosn in business school studies as the tough corporate titan who took on the old-line Japanese culture and won.
Mr. Ghosn earned a reputation for championing merit pay — which he thought he, too, deserved. He was known for being perennially dissatisfied with his multimillion-dollar salary, pointing out that it was not in line with Western auto leaders. Mr. Ghosn’s children, who also include Nadine, 29, and Anthony, 24, live in the United States and London but considered Tokyo their hometown. They described a side of Mr. Ghosn the public hasn’t seen — a goofy and involved parent who would hide chocolate Rolos around the house, help with homework, go with them to a Pizzakaya hangout, and spend Sundays buying bagels and roaming the crowded aisles of the Tokyu Hands store in the Shibuya neighborhood. “He set that tone of being fully present and creating almost monastic-like rituals that made his children feel safe and normal,” Caroline Ghosn said. “He was a master of creating this scaffolding to make the turbulence of his life more manageable.” Last month, that scaffolding came crashing down. The day after her father’s arrest, Maya Ghosn, who was visiting Tokyo, walked around the upscale Hiroo section, where she grew up, feeling “a deep loss of innocence,” she said. The Ghosns had hoped to see their father released before the holidays. On Dec. 20, a Japanese court took the unusual step of rejecting the prosecutors’ request to extend Mr. Ghosn’s detention, and his family prepared to post bail. Hours later, the Japanese authorities rearrested Mr. Ghosn on charges that he had temporarily shifted $16 million in personal losses incurred during the 2008 financial crisis to Nissan’s balance sheet.
“I called Maya just crying. We didn’t say anything for the first three minutes,” Caroline Ghosn said. “The whole situation is absolute whiplash on the order of a Greek tragedy.” Under Japanese law, Mr. Ghosn can be questioned daily by prosecutors and is allowed interactions with his Japanese lawyer and representatives from France, Brazil and Lebanon, his three countries of citizenship. His children are unable to communicate with him. “Never have we gone this long without hearing my father’s voice,” Maya Ghosn said. Her older sister said, “We just want him to come out of this healthy and well and have the ability to defend himself, have access to due process and the ability to use his voice.” They have been told that Mr. Ghosn’s cell is unheated and that he has asked repeatedly for blankets. He was denied pen and paper. They said he had lost at least 20 pounds.
He’s not a terrorist. He’s not El Chapo. Every detail we learn is heartbreaking,” Caroline Ghosn said. Mr. Ghosn moved his family to Brazil, the United States and France during his years in the auto industry, but the Ghosn sisters said they had fond memories of Japan. They eat rice and fish bento boxes for breakfast, and six months ago, Caroline Ghosn had a small wedding in the Japanese island town of Naoshima.
In the early 2000s, their father was so famous in Japan that the Japanese would (politely) ask for his autograph at the grocery store. Nissan was like a member of the family, the sisters said. “It was such a big part of his life, and he’d grown this child for 20 years, and it had come through blood, sweat and tears when nobody believed he could do it,” Maya Ghosn said. Short of a full merger, Mr. Ghosn had hoped to make the tie-up of Nissan and Renault permanent, according to a person briefed on his discussions. It was a move that many Nissan executives, including Mr. Saikawa, opposed. Media reports about Mr. Ghosn’s lifestyle frustrate his daughters, who view them as hyped to insinuate wrongdoing. His corporate residences in Tokyo, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Beirut, Lebanon, have also come under scrutiny. They were paid for through a Nissan shell company that Mr. Ghosn and Mr. Kelly had set up. Mr. Ghosn’s children said that they believed the houses were known to Nissan and that the homes had helped him efficiently lead two Fortune Global 500 companies. “He had those assets accessible to him so he could be more effective,” Caroline Ghosn said. Both women said they had been bombarded with media inquiries, including Japanese reporters pretending to be from the prosecutor’s office and others waiting outside their homes. Mr. Ghosn’s lawyers in the United States have warned his family that it would be unsafe to visit Japan for fear of arrest or questioning. Caroline Ghosn said that ever since her father’s arrest, she couldn’t bear to drive her beloved Nissan Leaf, an electric coupe in mint green. “I’m going to walk for the times my father hasn’t been able to,” she said. Jack Ewing contributed reporting.
