The onetime auto CEO now turned fugitive Carlos Ghosn has one big regret: that he didn’t take the CEO job at General Motors in 2009 when he had the chance.
Ghosn was the former CEO of French automaker Renault and Japanese automaker Nissan during most of the 2000s. But he encountered a slew of legal troubles that centered around his compensation. In the United States, a multimillion-dollar CEO salary is par for the course. But the French and Japanese frown upon CEOs earning fat compensations, so much so that Ghosn (rhymes with loan) was pressured to cut his compensation in half to about $10 million. A downward path to destruction followed from there.
“Carlos Ghosn’s great regret is, there was talk of him being offering the GM job and in America it is OK to be offered tens of millions of dollars if you’re a CEO, whereas in Japan and France they tear you down,” said filmmaker James Jones. “Perhaps he thought he deserved to earn more … but perhaps he should have gone to GM in 2009 when the Obama administration approached him?”
GM was emerging from bankruptcy at that time under the direction of President Barack Obama’s task force. But had Ghosn gone to Detroit and collected his big compensation (CEO Mary Barra received $29 million in total compensation last year), maybe there would never have been a shocking arrest, imprisonment, then a daring escape in the dark of night in a box, to now life as a fugitive.
Then again, if none of that happened, we wouldn’t have a riveting four-part docuseries on Apple TV+ debuting Friday. It tells Ghosn’s tale of fortune gained, a fall from grace and a bizarre turn of events that almost seems unreal.
The docuseries, “Wanted: The Escape Of Carlos Ghosn,” features all of the key players in the saga, including Mike Taylor, the former U.S. Green Beret who helped Ghosn escape from Japan, another U.S. Nissan executive who was arrested with Ghosn and Ghosn himself, who, for the first time, tells his side of the story from start to finish.
“This is the hardcore facts. That ultimately is our goal,” Jones, director of the docuseries told the Detroit Free Press. “It’s a dark and twisted, complicated story and it poses the question: Is Carlos Ghosn a victim or a villain? We let the viewer decide.”
Tracking down Ghosn and getting him to talk
The series is inspired by the book “Boundless,” by Wall Street Journal reporters Nick Kostov and Sean McLain. Director Jones, who won an Emmy Award for the 2022 documentary “Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes,” said he wanted to make this series because of his own intrigue in the story about “the man who escaped in the box.”
“But journalistically there was a lot to get your teeth into,” Jones said. “It was a complicated story. It wasn’t just right and wrong, there was right and wrong on all sides.”
The series took about two years to make and getting the principal players to participate was a feat in itself. For one thing, Ghosn is a fugitive who can’t leave Lebanon or he risks arrest.
“It took six months to even have a face-to-face meeting with him,” Jones said. “We met in a hotel in Beirut. We walked him through it and I think he respected that we knew a lot about what we were talking about. He’s been around long enough to know this isn’t going to be a puff piece and he wouldn’t have any editorial control. But I talked him into the fact that, ‘You’re your own best advocate’ to participate in it.”
Jones had to talk Taylor into getting in front of the camera, too. A former special forces soldier, Taylor had spent a career doing other daring rescues and kept a low profile. But after he was captured for helping Ghosn escape, his name was out there. He served 17 months in solitary confinement in a Japanese prison for his role in the escape.
“I was exposed in this (Ghosn’s escape) and my name got leaked and so I wanted to get as much of the full story out there, or as much as I could,” Taylor told the Detroit Free Press.
Living large, and then not
For those not familiar with the story of Ghosn, here’s a recap: He was the toast of the town in the 2000s, a brilliant CEO who engineered the comebacks of Renault and Nissan. He lived life large, including throwing a garish party at the palace of Versailles in France to celebrate an anniversary of the Renault/Nissan partnership. The $1 million party just happened to fall on his birthday and a number of friends and family, with no business ties to Renault or Nissan, were in attendance.
Chapter 1, called “Hubris,” documents Ghosn’s early life and his rise in the business world. He joined struggling Renault as executive vice president in 1996. The next year, executed a 20-billion-franc cost-cutting plan and Renault’s profitability tripled by the end of 1998.
A year later, Renault comes to the aid of debt-laden Japanese automaker Nissan and Ghosn engineers a turnaround again. He cuts some 21,000 jobs, shuts some plants but Nissan’s profits return and Ghosn is a celebrity in Japan. In 2000, he becomes CEO of Nissan and in 2005, he becomes CEO of Renault, too.
“Leadership is not something which is born with you,” Ghosn said in the docuseries as he reflects on his success. “It’s something that under the special circumstances of life, anybody can exercise.”
But his glory all came to a crashing halt on Nov. 18, 2018. He flew to Japan for what was to be a “regular week.” He said he was calm and had no sense anything was wrong. But shortly after landing, he was arrested at Tokyo International Airport. The allegations against him were that he underreported his salary by millions and misused company assets.
“I was traumatized,” Ghosn said in the docuseries. He maintains he is innocent. “The Board of Renault supported me for a couple of weeks … then they shot me in the head.”
Also arrested in Japan in November 2018 was Greg Kelly, a former American executive at Nissan Motor charged with underreporting Ghosn’s pay.
Solitary confinement and a plot
In Chapter 2, titled “Hostage Justice,” Kelly lays forth his struggle with the legal system in Japan. The viewer gets more detail, too, on Ghosn’s experience in the prison in Japan where he was kept in solitary confinement and allegedly mistreated in other ways. When Ghosn was finally allowed to post bail, he had lost a considerable amount of weight and fallen into a depression.
It is here where the Wall Street Journal reporters outline their investigation into the case and how they uncovered evidence of a plot inside Nissan to bring down Ghosn so that he would not complete a merger between Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi.
At one point, Japanese officials denied him the right to speak to his wife. He was being followed and watched at all times, he said.
An escape plan right out of Hollywood
Chapter 3 is called “Escape,” and we meet Mike Taylor and his son, Peter Taylor, who played a smaller role in helping Ghosn escape. Taylor explained to the Free Press his reason for wanting to help Ghosn:
“It wasn’t so much that I thought he was innocent or guilty — I had no knowledge of that — but what people were telling me is he was being tortured and with a 99% conviction rate in Japan, I knew he’d be tortured again,” Mike Taylor said. “So it was the human rights aspect that pulled me into it.”
He devised an escape plan right out of a Hollywood movie. He stuffed Ghosn into a music speaker case and drilled small air holes into it. Then, posing as a musician, Taylor audaciously walked through a Tokyo airport, past guards and loaded the box onto a private jet and flew out of Japan with Ghosn in the box. He returned Ghosn to Lebanon where Ghosn remains protected from extradition.
Who’s the bad guy?
In the last chapter of the docuseries, called “Victim or Villain,” Jones tells the fallout after the escape. How a reporter broke the story that Ghosn had escaped and how shocked the world was and Japan’s humiliation.
But Ghosn is far from a hero. In this part, more evidence is uncovered that indicates Ghosn may have misused some of Renault’s money. He maintains he is innocent, but he will not leave Lebanon for a trial in France.
The U.S. extradited Taylor and his son to Japan in March 2021, something that Taylor considers as a betrayal. He and his son were sentenced in July of that year. Mike Taylor spent 17 months in solitary confinement in a Japanese prison and Peter Taylor spent 13 months in solitary confinement. They were returned to the States in November 2022. He has a lot of resentment toward many parties.
“How do you get past the trauma of 17 months while in solitary confinement? How do you get past frostbite on your feet because it’s so cold in the cell?” Taylor said. “They (the United States) knew we were going to get tortured. Nobody wants to say the emperor has no clothes, but the fact is: Japan tortures people, plain and simple.”
As for Jones, he has his opinion of Ghosn.
“I certainly think he was a victim in those early days,” Jones said. “The Japanese charges were inappropriate. We have evidence there was a plot to take him down to stop the merger. He had a hard time in prison. But it gets complicated where you find the allegations they came across later on which were much more serious and even the French have issued an arrest warrant. That suggests there is something more serious going on.”
You can decide for yourself on Apple TV+ starting Friday. For more information go to www.apple.com/apple-tv-plus.
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Contact Jamie L. LaReau: jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.