And the chase is on! Carlos Ghosn, the one-time head of the Nissan and Renault auto enterprise, was awaiting trial on alleged financial shenanigans. Then he was gone – and has popped up in Lebanon.
By: Mike Mustiglione
“By the time most of Japan had woken up on Tuesday, he was gone. One of the country’s most famous criminal suspects had slipped past the cameras trained on his house, past the police and border guards and the Japanese citizens who for the past year have followed his every move,” is how The New York Times reported the case, which will almost certainly end up the basis of a Hollywood screenplay.
“I want to ask him, ‘How could you do this to us?’” Mr. Ghosn’s lawyer in Tokyo, Junichiro Hironaka, told a crush of 40 reporters outside his office on Tuesday,” according to the Times. “It was a cinematic escape, carried out just before New Year’s Day, Japan’s most important holiday, when government agencies and most businesses close for as long as a week.”
In Japan, authorities broke into the house in which the fugitive auto executive was staying before he arranged his escape to Lebanon earlier this week, possibly via Turkey.
“Japanese media reported that Tokyo district prosecutors entered the property on Thursday. CNN affiliate TV Asahi also reported that prosecutors were working with police to access CCTV video around his home as part of their investigation.
“Ghosn — the former chairman of Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors, and former chairman and CEO of their alliance partner, Renault — had been awaiting trial in Japan on charges of financial wrongdoing, including allegations that he understated his income for years and funneled $5 million of Nissan’s money to a car dealership he controlled. He was ousted from his posts at Nissan (NSANF) and Mitsubishi Motors following his arrest in November 2018, and later resigned from Renault (RNLSY),” CNN reported.
Ghosn is a Brazilian-born French businessman of Lebanese ancestry. He has served as the CEO of Michelin North America, chairman and CEO of Renault, chairman of AvtoVAZ, chairman and CEO of Nissan, and chairman of Mitsubishi Motors. He was also chairman and CEO of the Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi Alliance, a strategic partnership among those automotive manufacturers through a complex cross-shareholding agreement.
In 1996, Renault’s CEO Louis Schweitzer hired Ghosn as his deputy and charged him with the task of turning the company around from near bankruptcy. Ghosn elaborated a plan to cut costs for the period 1998–2000, reducing the workforce, revising production processes, standardizing vehicle parts and pushing the launch of new models.
