THE C-SUITE FUGITIVE
Ex-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn managed to escape house arrest in TTTokyo for a news conference in Beirut — with a little help from his friends
BEN DOOLEY AND MICHAEL CORKERY
BEIRUT— Most global fugitives tend to lie low. They don’t beckon reporters to news conferences or allow themselves to be photographed drinking wine by candlelight days after being smuggled in a box aboard a chartered jet to freedom.
But Carlos Ghosn, the deposed auto eeexecutive, is no normal fugitive. Un- a apologeticc, he stood at a lectern in Bei- rut before more than 100 journalists Wednesday WWh ow criminal and charges laid out of his financial case for wwwrongdoing in Japan were part of a vast conspiracy to take him down.
The highly choreographed event, during which Ghosn took aim at the Japanese justice system and his corporate enemies, was scheduled 415 days after he was first arrested and more than a wwweek after a team of operatives helped spirit him away from house arrest in Tokyo, where he was awaiting trial.
“I did not escape justice,” said Ghosn, 65, wearing an immaculate blue suit, wwwhite shirt and red tie. “I fled injustice a and political persecution.”
Until his arrest, he ruled an automotive alliance that spanned continents, comprising Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi. As head of Nissan, Ghosn was one of only a handful of foreign chief executives of a Japanese company. But the alliance threatens to fall apart, a parallel for a time when the global trade order and the military and political alliances that once held the modern world together are facing their toughest tests in decades. For nearly three hours Wednesday, Ghosn talked about how “more than 20 books of management have been written about me.” He referred to himself in the third person and talked about the drop in market valuation at the auto companies he once ran. He drew applause from some reporters and flattered others, promising to take questions from every region.
In a sit-down interview after the news conference, Ghosn remained fiercely protective of his legacy, which is badly bruised.
“The revival of Nissan, nobody’s going to take it from me,” he insisted.
Ghosn’s story isn’t a neat one. Company insiders have described him as increasingly imperious. Although he blames the Japanese justice system for its unfairness, he agreed last fall to pay $1million (U.S.) to settle a civil case in the United States, which barred him from serving as an officer or a director of a publicly traded company for 10 years.
A man with passports from several countries and homes across the world, Ghosn and his wife, Carole, who also faces a Japanese arrest warrant, are essentially stuck in Lebanon, where they have family and property but aren’t free from prosecution. Lebanese prosecutors said Ghosn must submit to an interrogation over his flight from Japan.
France is investigating whether Ghosn used company money from Renault to throw a Marie Antoinette-themed party at Versailles in 2016. And Nissan has accused him of siphoning millions of dollars from the auto company to pay for his yacht, buy houses and distribute cash to members of his family — all of which he denies.
Ghosn argued that in most countries, he would not have been held for months in jail for these types of allegations. He said he felt he was being treated “like a terrorist.”
During the news conference, he flashed giant slides on a white wall behind him, showing various corporate documents. In explaining some of the questionable personal expenses, Ghosn used a defence common on Wall Street: He said other executives at Nissan had signed off on the transactions, which made them authorized by the company.
Since his arrest in Japan in November 2018, Ghosn and his supporters have worked aggressively to tell his side of the story.
He has employed lawyers on at least three continents, talked to a Hollywood producer about making a movie about his ordeal and hired a public relations firm that advised the National Football League on its efforts to reduce head injuries.
In France, the “Committee to Support Mr. Carlos Ghosn” formed on Facebook. Some of his supporters there blame the government for failing to stand up for Ghosn, a French citizen, for fear of angering the country’s yellow-vest protesters railing against the global elite. In Lebanon, where Ghosn grew up, he is celebrated as a member of the diaspora of business leaders and artists who have achieved worldwide success. Hours after he landed in Beirut, Ghosn met with the country’s president, Michel Aoun, and other top leaders.
Lebanese supporters paid for billboards across Beirut with the executive’s face on them and the message: “We are all Carlos Ghosn.” But in truth, there are few people in the world who have Ghosn’s money and influence.
A grandson of a Lebanese entrepreneur who ran several companies in South America, Ghosn was born in Brazil in 1954. His family moved back to Lebanon when he was six, and he later attended college in France.
Ghosn went to work in the auto industry after college and made his mark revitalizing Renault. In the 1990s, he helped turn around Nissan by slashing jobs and upending its corporate culture. “It was a dead company,” he said Wednesday.
Ghosn expanded his auto empire further by creating the alliance of Renault, Nissan and another Japanese company, Mitsubishi.
His leadership of Renault gave him political standing in France. In Lebanon, some people hoped he would run for public office, maybe even president.
Ghosn’s personal and professional empire collapsed when he was arrested at the Tokyo airport upon his return from a trip to Lebanon. By that point, he had stepped down as chief executive at Nissan but was still its chair.
From the airport, Ghosn was taken to jail, where he was forced to live in solitary confinement for weeks at a time. He was allowed to shower twice a week and was let out of his cell for 30 minutes a day. Prosecutors, he said, hid the evidence against him and prohibited him from contacting his wife in Lebanon.
He was released on bail, but he was jailed again in April after he announced that he planned to speak with the media.
Ghosn wouldn’t talk Wednesday about how he got from Japan to Beirut.
Government-authorized media accounts from Turkey, where Ghosn landed on the first leg of his journey, have said he was smuggled inside a large box from an airport in Osaka, Japan.
The box was loaded into the storage area of a private plane, which was accessible from where the passengers sat. The two operatives working with Ghosn told the flight attendant not to bother them.
After takeoff, Ghosn was let out of the box and sat in the passenger area, which contained a bed and sofa and was separated from the front of the plane by a locked door.
The Bombardier jet landed in the rain at Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul. A car pulled up to the plane and then drove to another jet parked a short distance away, according to Turkish media. That second plane then took off for Beirut.
“The revival of Nissan, nobody’s going to take it from me.”
CARLOS GHOSN EX-NISSAN CEO