DUBLIN – The rich and powerful seldom end up in jail. They usually have the connections and money to secure their own freedom. So the sight of former Nissan chair Carlos Ghosn stuck in a Japanese jail is unusual. Ghosn, who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, has been incarcerated in Tokyo for over two months now on financial mismanagement charges. The ongoing scandal has attracted a lot of attention, with Ghosn alleging a conspiracy to get him off the board while Nissan says an internal investigation uncovered his misbehaviour. According to this Wall Street Journal article, he has found the conditions in his cell to be unsatisfactory. Personally, I imagine that a Japanese jail can’t be that terrible. Certainly, he would likely find conditions elsewhere in Asia a lot less hospitable. Either way, it’s intriguing to get a look inside a prison cell from someone who never expected to be there. – Felicity Duncan
Ghosn in Prison: No Clock, No Computer and 30 Minutes a Day Outside
By Nick Kostov
PARIS—Carlos Ghosn said he is allowed daily, 30-minute outdoor breaks on the roof of the detention center where he has been held for more than two months. Without a clock or watch, he has “no sense of time,” according to a jail house interview with the former auto executive published Thursday.
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Mr. Ghosn, who was ousted in November as chairman of Nissan Motor Co., told the French news agency AFP and Les Echos, a French newspaper, that he was the victim of a plot by people opposed to his attempts to integrate the Japanese car maker more fully with Renault and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. Mr. Ghosn said that Nissan was out to destroy his reputation and the condition of his detention made it hard to defend himself.
“I have an army of people throwing trash at me every day,” he said in the interview. “There are not only allegations of the prosecutors, but also those of Nissan. They take a lot of facts out of their context. It is a distortion of reality to destroy my reputation.” He said he has no access to a phone or a computer. “How can I defend myself?” he said.
Mr. Ghosn has been detained since Nov. 19. Tokyo prosecutors charged him with underreporting his compensation in eight years of Nissan financial statements and with causing Nissan to pay the company of a Saudi Arabian friend who helped him with a personal financial problem. Mr. Ghosn has said he is innocent of the charges. In an interview earlier this week with Japanese newspaper Nikkei, he blamed his arrest and the charges against him on “a plot and treason.”
Nissan Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa has denied there was a plot to remove Mr. Ghosn. Mr. Saikawa has said an internal investigation uncovered wrongdoing by Mr. Ghosn and that the findings were handed over to Tokyo prosecutors, who arrested Mr. Ghosn.
In the interview published Thursday, Mr. Ghosn provides new details about plans he had for further integration of Nissan, France-based Renault and Mitsubishi of Japan. He said he discussed his plans for a new holding company structure with Mr. Saikawa at the start of last year, before conversations slowed over the summer and picked up again in the fall.
The plan was for the holding company to own the shares in all three car makers while respecting the autonomy of each, but he said there had been “a resistance from the beginning.”
Mr. Ghosn also criticized the conditions of his detention in a Tokyo jail. Mr. Ghosn said the light in his cell was on at all hours of the day and night, and he had not been allowed to call his wife and children since his arrest. Mr. Ghosn’s detention in Japan has put a spotlight on Japan’s legal and justice system, where prosecutors have greater leeway to hold and question suspects than in many Western rich countries. Japanese officials have defended the system, including its reliance on confessions, and say in other respects it affords suspects more rights than in the U.S.
Write to Nick Kostov at [email protected]
