CARLOS GHOSN · TURBO 3 · ASTON VALKYRIE SPIDER
Arrested on charges of financial misconduct, he fled Japan in a music box. A new BBC doc tells the story behind the story
The story of the former Renault-Nissan CEO’s escape from Japan in a big box, plus our new favourite restomod and news on Aston’s topless Valkyrie
“I SAT IN FRONT OF CARLOS AND HIS WIFE IN BEIRUT DISCUSSING THE BEST WAY TO TELL HIS STORY”
For 20 years Carlos Ghosn, CEO of the Renault Nissan Alliance, ruled the car universe. And he was famous. In Japan his face adorned bento boxes and Manga comics. A poll even revealed that most Japanese woman saw him as the perfect father of their children. He had homes in Paris, Amsterdam, Rio, Lebanon and Tokyo and had a compensation of 13 million euros a year. And then it went wrong. In the most spectacular way possible.
Arrested on charges of financial impropriety, he spent 13 months in and out of Kosuge, one of Japan’s most infamous prisons. And then his story took the weirdest of turns as he skipped bail, escaping in the most audacious way. From global car superstar, he’s now the world’s most famous fugitive.
It all started in November 2019 as the 65-year-old Ghosn left his home in Lebanon and flew on Nissan’s private jet to Tokyo for some meetings. Ghosn reckoned he had flown this journey more than 600 times, but this time it would be very different. As he arrived at Tokyo airport he was told that there was a problem with his visa. He was taken to a room and waiting there was someone from the Tokyo prosecutor’s office.
He was told that he was under arrest for “issues relative to his compensation”. It was a complete shock. That evening he had planned to eat sushi with his daughter in one of Tokyo’s finest restaurants. Instead he would spend the night wearing prison fatigues and sleeping on a floor mat. Some comedown...
Lebanese-Brazilian Carlos Ghosn had been the car industry’s poster guy. During the Nineties Nissan had found itself billions of dollars in debt and sinking fast. And then it joined up with Renault. As part of the deal Ghosn, then Renault’s number two, went to sort out the mess. He sharpened up the product, changed the working culture and fired more than 20,000 Nissan employees around the world. Within a year of joining the Alliance, he cut the debt of the company and edged it closer to profit. By the time he was arrested the turnover of the Renault/Nissan/Mitsubishi Alliance was an astonishing $200 billion.
Like many other TV directors, I had been following the story and become desperate to sink my teeth into it. I pitched my ideas and three months later I was sitting in front of Carlos and his wife in Beirut discussing the best way to tell his story.
He told me that while in his prison cell he’d been expecting Nissan to send in a battalion of lawyers to sort the situation out. But the cavalry never came. It was being reported he was accused of misusing company assets and under-reporting his salary, something he strongly refutes. The press coverage of the case swung from amazement at his fall, to anger at his profligate lifestyle. The parties he attended and eye-watering amounts of money he was making made him a poster boy for greedy CEOs.
After more than 100 days in captivity he was released on bail. During this time, Ghosn tried to understand what was behind his arrest. He soon started to believe that he was the victim of a conspiracy playing out at Nissan board and government level. The conspiracy – he argued – was tied in with Nissan’s fears of being fully taken over by Renault, which was partially owned by the French government. Ghosn argued he was caught up in a political storm and soon he started to believe that the whole system was working against him.
He was arrested again, accused of more financial crimes, and once again released on bail (his bail costs reached a
dizzying $13 million). His lawyers told him that the various trials he faced could take years to process. And it got worse. After the second bail he was told that he could have no contact with his wife. A single phone call, email or a text would land him back in prison forfeiting the $13 million dollars bail. He began to worry that he would die alone in Japan.
It’s at this point that be became open to other possibilities. With his options reducing, a friend asked whether he had ever considered escaping from Japan. And so begins the defining chapter of Carlos Ghosn’s life...
Ghosn was convinced that his phone was bugged. He also came to believe that he was being stalked by ‘followers’, people from Nissan who tracked him from a distance checking for any breaches of bail. His first challenge was how to communicate secretly. At huge cost he bought a secret smartphone with which he started to make a plan.
One of those he made contact with was former Green Beret Michael Taylor. Taylor and his team first needed to know Ghosn’s routine: what security measures were in place to monitor his behaviour. They wanted to know whether there were any cracks they could exploit.
There were two pieces of information they knew would be critical. First, Ghosn was not wearing a security bracelet. He could move freely without being tracked. Second: he was allowed to leave his apartment and stay away for a night without needing to ask permission. It meant that there would be at least 24 hours before Ghosn would be flagged as missing.
The team quickly realised the only option open to them was to get out via private jet. Taylor’s plan was to pretend to be a travelling musician. As absurd as this sounded it was the perfect distraction. It also meant that he could travel with big music boxes, the size of which could fit a grown man.
The gang would fly in their private jet to a quiet airport – Osaka – and then they’d travel to Tokyo to pick Ghosn up. On the morning of 29 December 2019 Ghosn got a call that they were on their way. The plan was go.
Ghosn had been told to wear something unusual for him. He chose jeans and trainers. A CCTV image of him just after he left his apartment showed him wearing dark glasses, a baseball hat and a face mask. He was told not to look anyone in the eye and to stay silent.
They met with Ghosn at the Grand Hyatt in Tokyo to begin their journey. They got a taxi to the train station and then a bullet train to Osaka. Taylor and his team had hired a hotel room by Osaka airport where they had left their music storage boxes. One had breathing holes drilled into the bottom. He got in, was covered with a sheet and then they headed to the airport.
They decided the best time to get Ghosn out would be over the holiday season. They believed the greater number of casual workers at the airport would make the plan more likely to succeed. The quality of staff would be lower.
The team also banked on the music box being too big to pass through a scanner. But that didn’t mean that a customs guard couldn’t ask to look inside. But this is when Taylor’s rock star cover story triumphed. The same guards that greeted him when he arrived in Tokyo a few hours earlier were now working the night shift.
“How was the concert?” a guard asked. “Fine,” they replied. Perhaps because they were playing at being rich and famous, perhaps because they were flying on a private jet, they were ushered through to the plane without issue. They had 30 minutes to wait before their allotted take-off time. Ghosn described it as the longest half hour of his life. And then they were given clearance to push off. They first flew to Istanbul where he changed planes before heading home to Beirut.
And what of Ghosn now? He fights on, telling the world of his innocence. Yet the Japanese authorities believe that his escape is proof of his guilt. He has a red notice against him meaning that if he crosses an international border he can be arrested and deported to Japan. He goes everywhere with armed security (who ironically drive him around in a Nissan) and there are metal bars across the windows. He has his freedom of sorts, but for a man of the world it’s not much of a life.
“THERE WOULD BE AT LEAST 24 HOURS BEFORE GHOSN WOULD BE FLAGGED AS MISSING”