Carlos Ghosn will be detained until April 14, his appeal against this new imprisonment having been rejected.
Prosecutors may then apply for an additional 10-day detention, after which they will have to charge or release him.
The Tokyo prosecutor’s office suspects the former CEO of Renault to have violated his professional obligations and to have caused Nissan financial losses of $ 5 million (€ 4.45 million) between December 2015 and July 2018.
Carlos Ghosn on Thursday described his arrest as “revolting and arbitrary” and asked for help from the French government. An official of the Tokyo Prosecutor’s Office justified the arrest in order to avoid the destruction of evidence.
The former leader was released on March 6 from bail of nine million dollars after 108 days in custody.
His new arrest, described by NHK public television as very unusual for a person released on bail almost a month ago, is allegedly linked to suspicious payments made to a Renault-Nissan alliance business partner in Oman, in the Middle-East.
The Renault group is also examining the payments made by Carlos Ghosn to this same company in the Sultanate of Oman. Reuters learned Monday from two sources familiar with the matter that Renault had alerted the French justice after discovering the existence of suspicious payments to the local commercial distributor.
Nissan had established in January that its own regional subsidiary had paid the Omani distributor questionable payments of more than $ 30 million.
Carlos Ghosn has so far been facing criminal charges for failing to report about $ 82 million (about € 73 million) in salary and for temporarily transferring personal financial losses to Nissan during the global financial crisis.
He denies these charges, for which he incurs a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of 10 million yen (79,783 euros).
(Naomi Tajitsu and Maki Shiraki, Jean Terzian and Dominique Rodriguez for French service)