Nissan’s Ghosn gone, American Kelly faces Japan trial alone
His boss Carlos Ghosn escaped financial misconduct charges by fleeing the country, but another former Nissan executive is still awaiting trial in Japan: Greg Kelly.
Kelly’s trial in Tokyo District Court is to open Sept. 15, nearly two years after his arrest, and the same day he turns 64 . If convicted of charges related to alleged under-reporting of Ghosn’s income, Kelly could face up to a decade in prison.
Even if acquitted, he has already paid a heavy price, unable to leave Japan and go home to Tennessee while out on bail. He has yet to see his newborn grandchild. His wife got a student visa to stay with him in Tokyo.
Kelly, like Ghosn, says he is innocent.
Tokyo prosecutors say Kelly and Ghosn, the former chairman of Nissan Motor Co., violated financial laws by under-reporting Ghosn’s pay by about 9 billion yen ($85 million) from 2011 through 2018.
Jamie Wareham, Kelly’s lawyer in the U.S., says a compensation agreement was never finalized. He believes the real motive was a “corporate coup” to oust Ghosn by others at Nissan who feared he might engineer a takeover by its French alliance partner, Renault.
“The whole thing is a fraud,” Wareham told The Associated Press by phone.
Ghosn could have been a star witness for the defense. But he is gone, having fled to Lebanon late last year, hidden in a box aboard a private jet.
“He is frustrated. He is upset,” Wareham said of Kelly. “He has been abused from the beginning by the Japanese system.”
Nissan’s U.S. division hired Kelly, who has a law degree, in 1988. He became a representative director in 2012, the first American on Nissan’s board. Kelly worked in legal counsel and human resources at the company. He was arrested in November 2018, upon his arrival from the U.S. in Japan, thinking he was going to attend Nissan meetings.
Kelly has not been charged with breach of trust allegations that Ghosn is facing, which center around suspected use of Nissan money for personal purposes, including fancy homes. Ghosn’s lawyers have argued the properties were needed for work, and contend that such questions could have been raised internally at the company and did not require prosecution.
Tokyo Deputy Chief Prosecutor Hiroshi Yamamoto said the preparations for Kelly’s trial took a long time because of the massive amounts of evidence involved.
“We feel we have a solid case with ample evidence to win a guilty verdict,” Yamamoto told reporters recently.
Wareham, Kelly’s counsel, said prosecutors have sent the equivalent of a billion pages of documents, mostly in English, that can only be examined on a computer at the Tokyo legal team’s office. They have yet to hand over more than 70 7-inch-size boxes full of material marked as evidence, with only two weeks left before the trial opens.