Japan urges Ghosn to return as fugitive tycoon defends escape
TOKYO: Japan’s justice minister yesterday urged Carlos Ghosn to return and make his case in court, after the fugitive former auto tycoon gave an impassioned defence of his decision to jump bail and flee to Lebanon.
Ghosn made his first public appearance since his audacious December escape at a combative press conference in Beirut on Wednesday, where he slammed Japan and said he had been forced to flee because he would not get a fair trial.
The ex-chairman of NissanRenault faced four charges of financial misconduct in Tokyo, which he alleges were cooked up by disgruntled executives at Nissan in collusion with Japanese prosecutors.
Yesterday, Japanese Justice Minister Masako Mori called those claims “baseless” and insisted Ghosn’s “assertions will not justify his flight from Japan in any way.”
“If defendant Ghosn has anything to say on his criminal case, he should make his argument in a Japanese court and present concrete evidence,” she added.
“If he claims innocence, he should face a trial under the justice system in Japan, where he was doing business, and he should submit evidence to prove his claims,” Mori said.
The former car magnate spent much of his two-hour press conference insisting that justice was impossible for him in Japan.
He argued that the charges against him, including allegedly under-reporting his pay and skimming Nissan funds for his own personal use, were a bid to bring him down for political reasons.
“There was no way I was going to be treated fairly ... this was not about justice,” he told reporters, responding to questions in English, Arabic, French and Portuguese.
Ghosn said he was “presumed guilty before the eyes of the world and subject to a system whose only objective is to coerce confessions, secure guilty pleas.”
Ghosn has argued since his shock November 2018 arrest that the case against him was a bid to block his plans to more closely integrate Nissan with its French partner Renault.
On Wednesday, he alleged extensive collusion between the Japanese automaker and prosecutors and said he was the victim of character assassination.
The Tokyo prosecutor’s office hit back, saying “Ghosn’s allegations completely ignore his own conduct.”
“His one-sided criticism of the Japanese justice system is totally unacceptable.”
Former Nissan CEO Hiroto Saikawa, a one-time Ghosn protege who resigned in the wake of the scandal, insisted Ghosn “fled because he was afraid of being found guilty.”
And Japanese media appeared unconvinced by Ghosn’s attempts to rebut the charges against him.
“We can’t take his word for it because he fled illegally abroad,” the Asahi daily said in a commentary. — AFP
If defendant Ghosn has anything to say on his criminal case, he should make his argument in a Japanese court and present concrete evidence. Masako Mori