Carlos Ghosn Defends His Legacy – The New York Times

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

Today: The trial was poised to be the most closely-watched in Japanese history — a case involving claims of corporate greed, wounded national pride, and a rigged legal system, until the defendant pulled off an unimaginable escape. Ben Dooley with the latest in the saga of Carlos Ghosn.

It’s Tuesday, January 14.

Ben, set the scene for us. It’s just before New Year’s in Tokyo. What are you doing?

So I’m fast asleep. It’s about 7:30 in the morning. I’m expecting to have a very easy holiday. The government offices are all closed for a week. Nothing’s happening in Japan. And all of a sudden my phone starts ringing.

And it rings and rings and rings, and finally I decide I better answer it. When I pick it up, it’s New York.

And then when you say New York, you mean the feared editors of The New York Times.

Yes, the feared editors. You never want to get an early morning phone call from New York. It’s never good news. It means either something bad has happened because someone else did something that you need to be worried about, or you’ve made some terrible mistake. And what they tell me is that Carlos Ghosn, the most famous criminal defendant in Japan, has just mysteriously disappeared and reappeared in Lebanon.

And you know, my first reaction is, how could he possibly have done this? You know, it seems like something out of a movie — impossible.

And then remind us who Carlos Ghosn is.

So Carlos Ghosn is this legendary C.E.O. who made his name by reviving Nissan, this Japanese company, one of the country’s largest automakers. He took the company from essentially what he has recently called it — a dead company — and brought it back to life. And it was this miracle of turnaround that made him famous in Japan and throughout the world.

And he went on to become the C.E.O. of Nissan, and also the French automaker Renault.

And those two companies formed an alliance and became one of the world’s largest automakers.

He’s just living high — this incredible celebrity in the business world. And then all of a sudden, out of the blue, November 2018, he lands at an airport in Tokyo and is arrested.

And over the following several months, he is charged with four counts of financial wrongdoing.

Essentially, prosecutors say that he was trying to enrich himself to the company. So that’s the situation he finds himself in. He is facing trial on these four charges when he flees from Japan to Lebanon.

And what’s the answer to that question you have of how this happened? What’s the story?

Well, first, it’s important to understand that he’s under house arrest, but it’s not super strict. I mean, he goes out to dinners, he travels to Kyoto. So he’s been able to move around fairly easily. But as best as we can tell from our reporting and from local media and government statements is basically this. On December 29, he walks out of his home in Tokyo. This is a two-story, fairly large home in central Tokyo in a swanky neighborhood. And there are three cameras above the door that were installed by the prosecutors to keep a watch on him. And he just strolls out. He’s got a face mask on, like a surgical mask, the kind of thing that people typically wear here to stop themselves from getting sick, or stop other people from getting sick. He’s got on a hat, black clothes, and he walks out to a nearby hotel. He meets two men there, and they get on a bullet train to Osaka, which is a city to the southwest of Tokyo. They’re on the train for about two hours. They get off the train. They walk into a hotel. And then the two men walk out without Carlos Ghosn, but what they have is these two boxes, two large boxes. And the boxes have been described as sort of boxes for holding audio equipment, maybe like speakers or kinds of things you might see roadies carrying at a concert. And these two men take these boxes to the Kansai International Airport to the private jet terminal. And the boxes are too big to go through the luggage screening. So they’re not screened. Keep in mind, it’s almost New Year’s. People are off their guard. They’re not really that interested in checking to see what’s in these boxes. They’re just kind of relaxing, looking forward to their holiday. And these man just wheel these boxes right onto the plane, a private jet that’s waiting there. And the plane takes off, and in one of those boxes we believe is Carlos Ghosn.

Wow. So Japan’s most famous criminal defendant flees the country in an audio box.

That’s what we think happened.

I mean, what you’re describing feels both very simple and extremely elaborate.

Yeah. Well, this was not something that he did by himself with two friends. This is something that took a lot of resources, a lot of planning, and it’s something that he’s famous for — being this detail-oriented planner and someone who likes to manage lots of people, like big teams of people. So you can imagine this was a pretty complex operation even if the execution was simple.

Ben, after all of that detailed planning and this escape, why is he going to Lebanon of all places?

Well, he had three passports. He is a citizen of Brazil, France and Lebanon. And Lebanon was the closest. It doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Japan, which means that the Lebanese government will never send him back to Japan to face a trial. And he’s something of a national hero in Lebanon. So he could expect a hero’s welcome.

So what’s the reaction back in Tokyo once word trickles back that he has pulled this off?

Silence. Absolute silence. They’re caught completely off-guard. But behind that silence, there’s sort of an embarrassment that the prosecutors have allowed the country’s most famous criminal defendant to slip through their fingers, and some outrage. Even among people who supported him, there was a sense that he’d gone too far, and that he should have stayed in Japan to defend himself. That would have been the most appropriate thing for him to do.

And then what are you doing at this point? Because a story that I assume you are very much responsible for has literally just up and left the country that you cover.

Yeah. Well, suddenly this story that I was hugely responsible for, when I was supposed to be taking a vacation, just appears in my lap. And I’m just frantically calling as many people as I can, getting in touch with his PR team, his lawyers, various people that I’ve spoken to over the previous year about his case, pretty much anyone I can think of. And the big question I have is, now that he’s free, is he going to talk? And if so, will he talk to us? And then I get a phone call. And someone asks me, if Carlos Ghosn is willing to talk to you, would you be able to get on a plane to Lebanon?

Wow.

And I said, of course.

We’ll be right back.

O.K. So Ben, Carlos Ghosn is willing to talk to you. What happens next?

So I go online and I buy a last-minute ticket to Beirut. And I’m frantically packing, get all my stuff in order, run to Haneda Airport, jump on the plane.

And 23 hours later, I touch down in Lebanon.

Wow. That’s a long flight.

Yeah. There was a layover in Paris. So that wasn’t so bad. I had a croissant and some coffee. So I’m in Lebanon and I’m preparing to talk to Carlos Ghosn. But before I get to sit down with him, first there’s this news conference that he’s scheduled.

So I and one of my colleagues from the Beirut bureau go to a Press Club, where the conference is going to be held.

And we get there, and it’s just chaos.

I mean, there are hundreds of reporters. They’re all clamoring to get in. People are screaming, shouting, pushing.

There are armed guards with dogs and TV trucks everywhere.

And we get inside.

And we go upstairs and we walk into this big, empty white room with chairs lined up.

There are about 100 reporters there from all over the world.

And they’re all waiting to hear what Carlos Ghosn has to say.

And when he comes in, people just swarm him. It’s a crush of reporters.

Flashbulbs are going off and everyone’s just crowded around him.

He looks healthy. He’s got a nice black suit on, red tie. I mean, he’s the picture of a C.E.O.

So no worse for the wear?

You wouldn’t know it. And he walks up to the lectern, and the show starts.

It’s everything that he’s been saving up for the last year.

He just is taking the opportunity to explain himself, what happened to him, his whole story.

And he starts walking us through his history with Nissan.

— and how he turned it around, and the amazing success that the company had while he was C.E.O.

And then he starts to talk about the arrest.

And how it happened.

And how he was completely caught off guard.

He says it was like Pearl Harbor.

Huh. He says his arrest was like the sneak attack from Japan that led the United States into World War II?

Yeah, exactly. He said he had no idea it was coming.

And then he starts to go through all of the charges against him.

And he’s got slides. He’s projecting documents on the wall.

You know, getting way into the weeds of these issues, frankly trying to litigate them in front of this audience.

And people, at this point, are starting to get a little antsy. They’re starting to have conversations behind me, because you can’t read the documents. And even if you could, there’s no way that we were in a position to judge what they actually said about the charges against him. But the larger point he’s trying to make is that this is a stitch up.

That all the charges against him are completely political. They’re made up. And he’s saying that the reason why the Japanese government brought these charges against them is basically because he wounded their national pride.

And what’s his argument for how he did that?

So basically, it comes down to the idea that, as the head of Renault, he had been tasked by the French government to make the alliance between Renault and Nissan stronger, to make the alliance so strong that the two companies would never be able to be separated. And this was seen in Japan, he argues, as essentially an attempt to take one of the crown jewels of Japan’s auto industry and turn it into a French company. And if this were to have gone through, the argument was then France would be in control of one of Japan’s biggest and most important companies.

And that was something that the Japanese government and certain people at Nissan were just unwilling to allow to happen.

So he says that the crime he committed — which it sounds like he doesn’t think is a crime at all — is taking a Japanese brand and making it less Japanese, and offending the people and the government of Japan in the process.

Right. And he says that was not at all his plan, but that was the fear, and that’s what led to his downfall.

According to Carlos Ghosn?

Yes.

And he also went into detail about his experience in the Japanese justice system.

How he had spent more than 130 days in a Japanese jail waiting to get on bail. During that time, he had been interrogated by prosecutors without his lawyer from 7 to 11 hours a day. And even once he got out of jail, there were these restrictions put on his daily life. And the most egregious one for him, he said, was that he wasn’t allowed to meet his wife.

And Japanese prosecutors had essentially said that they believed that if he were allowed to speak to her, might tamper with evidence, might try to get to witnesses in the case. And his argument is, well, that’s ridiculous, because if I wanted to do that, I could have done that through anyone. I didn’t have to use my wife. So the only reason why they were forbidding me from seeing her was because they were punishing me.

They’re trying to squeeze a confession out of him. And when he refused to confess to the crimes they had charged him with, they threatened to make his life a living hell.

So he said that all these elements add up to create a system of justice that was rigged against him, and that he had no chance of ever getting a fair trial in Japan, and that’s why he felt he had to escape.

And Ben, as you’re sitting there hearing Carlos Ghosn make these arguments, what are you thinking? And do they sound accurate and truthful, or do they sound highly disputable?

It’s impossible to say at this point. We haven’t seen any of the evidence. And I think if you were to ask the prosecutors, they would say, this is a man who lied to Nissan’s shareholders. This is a man who enriched himself at the company’s expense. And it’s just impossible to know what the truth is at this point.

Right, because he fled the country before the trial.

Right, exactly.

And so Carlos Ghosn finishes up his presentation, and he moves into the question and answer section.

And he starts answering questions in four different languages.

He’s speaking Arabic, which is the language he spoke at home with his parents.

He’s speaking Portuguese, which is the language of the country he was born — Brazil.

He’s speaking in French, the language of the country he was educated. And, of course, in English.

I’m just watching him flawlessly move from language to language answering these questions for reporters around the world. And it occurs to me as I’m watching, it’s an incredible performance, and it says a lot about this guy’s identity. He’s this transnational business person who essentially doesn’t belong to any one nation. He lives in this almost kind of like gray area between nation states. And there’s something about it that it seems is really essential to the case against him and how he’s responded to it.

What do you mean?

Well, he believes that the charges against him were brought by the Japanese because he is not Japanese. So there’s that on one hand. But on the other hand, also, he feels like he’s not beholden to Japanese justice. As this person with passports from Brazil and France and Lebanon, and houses around the world, and connections, and networks that span the globe, he doesn’t feel like he has to subject himself to Japanese justice. He believes that he can make the choice to just get up and leave, to disappear.

Right. So whether or not this tactic can ever seem justified or not justified, the message that Carlos Ghosn is sending by fleeing his trial in Japan is that if you’re a global C.E.O. and you are well-connected and you have resources, you get to choose which country’s legal system you can abide by, which ones you’re willing to participate in, and which ones you plan an elaborate escape from, which basically boils down to not really feeling accountable to any one country.

Right. And it was a question that was bothering me, and I really wanted to ask him about it. And I finally got the chance after the press conference ended and I got to sit down with him one-on-one. We went upstairs, and I tried to set up the fancy recorder you guys made me buy, and I messed it up. So we didn’t get the whole interview, unfortunately. [LAUGHTER]

We forgive you. It had been a long week.

It had been a long week. And I sat down with him and I asked him that question.

And he kind of danced around the question, but he came down basically on the idea that the Japanese system is rigged.

That was the message that he wanted to convey to the world.

And the great irony here is that he says he’s searching for justice, but because of a decision that he made he may never find it, because there’s always going to be an asterisk next to this case. He’s not going to be able to make his case fully, and the Japanese prosecutors are never going to be able to make it either. So there’s not going to be a real test of his innocence. But what he has done is, he has let C.E.O.s around the world know that this is an option, that if they don’t like the justice in the country where they are, they can just get up and leave.

Thank you, Ben.

Thank you, Michael.

We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today. [CHANTING] On Monday, protests broke out in two major Iranian cities as citizens expressed outrage over the acknowledgment that their government shot down a passenger plane, killing everyone onboard. The protests against the government are a striking turnaround for Iran’s leaders. Just a few days ago, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets in support of the government after the United States killed General Qassim Suleimani. Many of those protesting the downing of the plane are calling for accountability from the government, which had originally denied any role in the incident. And Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey has dropped out of the Democratic race for president after failing to qualify for the next debate. He now joins Julián Castro and Marianne Williamson in quitting the race just before voting begins in Iowa. Polling shows a close race in Iowa, with Joe Biden in the lead, and the next three competitors — Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg in a statistical tie.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.