Yet again there’s something fishy with Japan’s justice

JAPAN’S treatment of Carlos Ghosn smells worse than old sushi.

Investigators claim the Nissan chairman understated his pay, which is a technical breach of stock exchange rules. Perhaps so, but in Japan, this is apparently not uncommon, arguably because executives there earn far less than in other parts of the world. Ghosn’s $9 million (£7 million) may sound a lot, but not against the bosses of VW, GM or Ford, who got $10 million,

$22 million and $17 million last year.

But despite the widespread falsifying of accounts in Japan, there have been few arrests. Until Ghosn.

Indeed, as Japan-based organised crime expert Jake Adelstein says, Tokyo prosecutors repeatedly fail to take on the powerful, from Toshiba’s $1 billion accounting fraudsters to bosses at the Tokyo Electric Power Company behind the 2011 nuclear power plant disaster.

The public has lost faith.

It would hardly be surprising, then, if those prosecutors viewed Ghosn as an easy way of buffing up their damaged reputation. A foreigner, particularly a well-paid one, makes for an easy target with little cover from Japan’s all-powerful elites.

There’s a national industrial dimension here, too. Ghosn was bringing Renault and Nissan ever closer together. The two car-makers have been in a strategic alliance for years, but Ghosn is thought to have been planning a full-on merger.

Given that Renault owns 43% of Nissan, it was likely the French company would have the upper hand. Another reason his demise might be convenient.

Perhaps my view of the Ghosn affair is tarnished by camera giant Olympus’s treatment of Michael Woodford a few years back. In that