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Ghosn desides House Arrest in Japan is just a suggestion, manages to escape to Lebanon

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ButtFumble

ButtFumble 5172

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It's not clear how Ghosn — who is a citizen of France, Brazil and Lebanon — was able to leave Japan before his trial took place. Ghosn's lawyer Junichiro Hironaka told reporters Tuesday that the departure of his client, who faced a lengthy potential prison sentence, was a "complete surprise."
 
"We are puzzled and shocked," he said in front of TV cameras gathered outside his office in Tokyo. Hironaka added that Ghosn's attorneys hold his passports, and that the former auto executive "could not possibly use them."

gee how on earth could someone get away to a place like Lebanon or Brazil when someone else holds their passports....I mean there is not a chance on hell that you could get a second passport from either one of those places or even another whole identity including a passport

 

The French government is also "very surprised" that Ghosn left Japan, French Secretary of State for Economy and Finance Agnès Pannier-Runacher told France Inter radio. Ghosn is "not above the law," she said, adding that "if a foreign citizen fled French justice we would be really angry."

oh noooozzz!!! the French are angry with me....I KNOW YOU ARE MAD AT ME STOP TRYING TO SURRENDER TO ME!!!!

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RDCanecutter

RDCanecutter 26411

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46 minutes ago, AUS-97HORN said:

holy shit. could you imagine the shit storm this causes?

 

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/30/business/carlos-ghosn-lebanon/index.html

 

 

its on par with a scenario if Epstein had  somehow been allowed to stay under house arrest before his trial and then managed to escape to Lebanon as well. 

What makes you think he didn't?

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89648

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18 minutes ago, hornhorn said:

They have 99% conviction rate so they know what they're getting into.

And if you happen to be facing the death penalty in Japan, they still hang folks.

Quote

The execution warrant is signed by the Minister of Justice after internal consultations within the justice ministry. Once the final approval is signed, the execution will take place within five days.

By statute, the execution cannot take place on a national holiday, Saturday, Sunday, or between 31 December and 2 January.

The death penalty is carried out by hanging in an execution chamber within the detention centre. When an execution order has been issued, the condemned prisoner is informed on the morning of their execution. The condemned is given a choice of the last meal. The prisoner's family and legal representatives, and also the general public, are informed only afterwards. Since 7 December 2007, the authorities have been releasing the names, natures of crime, and ages of executed prisoners.[12]

The method of hanging is the long drop, causing a quick death by neck fracture.

Quote

The Japanese public has generally supported the death penalty. The government regularly monitors support for the death penalty, the last survey in 2015 showing 80.3% of the public believing that the death penalty is "permissible" and 9.7% that it should be abolished.

They don't fuck around.

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StruggleBus

StruggleBus 3922

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1 hour ago, AUS-97HORN said:

holy shit. could you imagine the shit storm this causes?

 

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/30/business/carlos-ghosn-lebanon/index.html

 

 

its on par with a scenario if Epstein had  somehow been allowed to stay under house arrest before his trial and then managed to escape to Lebanon as well. 

Equating the alleged crimes of Epstein and Ghosn is retarded 

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Bateshorn

Bateshorn 9927

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By all accounts, despite having a Western style Democracy, the Japanese judicial system would make some autocracies blush with its lack of defendant’s rights.  
 

Ghosn probably had his hand in the till at Nissan,  but the judicial reaction of the Japanese here was ridiculous overkill.

Edited by Bateshorn
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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32389

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/nissan-ceo-carlos-ghosns-great-escape-writes-a-hollywood-ending-to-japanese-imprisonment?ref=home

 

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Former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn has made a dramatic escape from Japan, where he was under house arrest, and has now found refuge in Lebanon, where he grew up and owns a home. And if his saga sounds like something out of cinematic thriller, well, stay tuned. Roughly a week before Ghosn made it to Beirut, he was cheerfully discussing a possible movie version of his life with a mega-Hollywood producer in his Tokyo home. 

 

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A friend of Ghosn says “He was keen on the idea of a documentary or film exposing his unjust treatment by the Japanese criminal-justice system. I asked him, ‘What do you think will be the conclusion?’

“He made a tiny smile and said, ‘Oh, it will be a surprise ending.’”

Surprise, surprise! 

 

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Carlos Ghosn who once found himself trapped in a dire scenario scripted by the Japanese government, Tokyo prosecutors, and a dubious faction of Nissan, has rewritten the narrative. He has now what appears to be a happy ending. And perhaps even Japan’s elite secretly are happy to see him gone. Almost everyone saves face; almost everyone wins. 

Spoiler

Ghosn is under indictment on several charges of financial crimes and breach of trust in Japan. His trial was supposed to begin next year, but it seems he decided he did not want to spend the next decade in a Japanese prison cell. (He’s already spent more than four months in jail here, even though he hasn’t been convicted of anything.) 

As early as November 2017, the Japanese government and some executives at Nissan, fearing that Renault would take over the once completely Japanese-run company, began planning to get rid of Ghosn—by any means possible. 

A former METI (Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry) official who had been put on the board of Nissan worked with Hari Nada and another Nissan executive to launch an internal probe to see if they could find anything that could take Ghosn out of the picture. 

When it became apparent that Nissan was going to be put under the control of Renault in spring of 2018, and no longer be equal in the partnership, Nissan executives than consulted with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s legal adviser, former special prosecutor Akihide Kumada. They wanted to know the feasibility of a plea bargain that would allow prosecutors to put Ghosn in jail, but spare those loyal to the greater interests of a “Japanese” Nissan.

As reported in Litera and other Japanese media, Kumada functions as a special counsel for the ruling political party in Japan, headed by Abe, and set up meetings with the Tokyo Special Prosecutors Office. Two or more Nissan executives made cooperation agreements with the Ministry of Justice guaranteeing them criminal immunity—all they had to do was turn over evidence damaging to their former boss. The phrase “two or more” is frustrating to use, but the Tokyo prosecutors refuse to divulge, even to the defense, how many people at Nissan cut a deal with them. 

Ghosn has called it a conspiracy, and you look up the strict definition—“a secret agreement made between two or more people or groups to do something bad or illegal that will harm someone else”—that’s clearly what it was. 

At first it worked out well—an almost perfect plot. The Tokyo Prosecutor Special Investigator’s Office used new plea-bargaining rules to put together what it hoped would be a slam-dunk case. Japan only allowed plea-bargaining from 2018 onward, and while the Ghosn case is not the first to use the system, it is the most spectacular and controversial. 

Nissan executives lured Ghosn back to Japan on false pretenses. On Nov. 19 last year at Haneda Airport, prosecutors boarded his private jet, arrested him, and took him away on the spot. The initial charges, related to Ghosn under-reporting his income, were flimsy allegations that would normally never result in the arrest of a Japanese CEO. The world and Ghosn were caught off guard. 

The plan, according to one source close to the prosecutor’s office, was to detain Ghosn, shake him, interrogate him, and then he would confess to some of the charges, resign, and all problems would be solved. 

Unfortunately for that scenario, Ghosn did not confess. And thus he was suddenly introduced to what many call Japan’s “hostage justice” system, in which a suspect can be held for up to 23 days before even being charged. 

He was held for the maximum time the law allowed, then indicted and then rearrested. He was detained in solitary confinement for a total of 108 days after his initial arrest, and that was just round one. 

During that time, as is par for the course in this country, prosecutors interrogated him for hours each day without the presence of a lawyer. They relied heavily on what many have now described as a flawed and biased Nissan investigation, without independence or integrity—as former Nissan officials are now saying. The prosecutors spoon-fed the press dubious information in an attempt to discredit Ghosn, and they refused to talk to people who might exonerate the accused. 

Ghosn was allowed out on bail for the first time on March 5, 2019, with a bond of 1 billion yen ($9 million). He left the detention center on March 6 disguised as a manual laborer but looking more like Mario from Donkey Kong, which earned him some ridicule. 

In April, Ghosn made the mistake of announcing in tweets that were in Japanese and English that he would hold a press conference. The prosecutors swiftly rearrested him on April 4 in a 6 a.m. raid, and he was back in solitary. 

Ghosn was let out on bail a second time on April 25, but the prosecutor and the court originally put in place harsh conditions that prohibited him from seeing or speaking with his wife, and additional funds were required. He also had to live at a registered domestic address—a problem because many people in Tokyo refused to rent him a place, fearing retaliation. His use of personal computers and even meeting others was strictly limited. He was prohibited from leaving the country.

One of his lawyers, Takashi Takano, said, “The restrictions are so severe they even handicap his ability to mount an effective defense to the charges brought against him.”

Ghosn may actually be guilty of some of what he is accused of doing—charges that include siphoning off funds from Nissan for his own personal use. If so, so be it. But it is extremely unlikely a Japanese CEO or crony of Shinzo Abe would be prosecuted for doing the same things. Even a suspected rapist gets to avoid the indignity of arrest, confinement, and interrogation if he knows the right people in Japan. 

The whole Nissan case has played out very poorly in the court of public opinion. It cast a negative light on Japan’s criminal-justice system. It has made many talented foreigners wary of working for a Japanese company. Most of the best non-Japanese executives at Nissan already have left—or been forced out. 

Nissan’s reputation has been severely damaged and the company’s decision to use criminal charges as a blunt object to get rid of its former CEO has been a self-inflicted wound, destroying billions of dollars in shareholder value. In layman’s terms, if you owned Nissan stock, you’ve lost a lot of money. 

Ghosn’s legal trial was supposed to begin in April 2020, but he never expected it to be fair—and it’s easy to understand why.

As reported in The New York Times, Japan’s prosecutors have refused to share thousands of files with the defense, which shows the cozy relationship they have with Nissan, but also illustrates an essential truth about criminal prosecutors in Japan. Japanese prosecutors generally don’t care about justice, they care about winning. They routinely drop about half of all cases brought to them, but once someone is indicted, the conviction rate is 99 percent. No prosecutor in Japan wants to be in humiliating 1 percent loser category. 

For Ghosn, who has come to understand that system and those odds well, the only chance of winning seemed to be running. No one is yet sure how he made it out of the country, but French media reports that he arrived on a private jet in Beirut on Dec. 30.

Some Lebanese media have claimed he was smuggled out of the country in a box designed for transporting musical instruments. What is not clear is how he escaped Japanese surveillance and the people watching him. The Japanese government today announced that it had no record of him leaving the country. 

Curiously, about 10 days prior to Ghosn’s departure, on Dec. 20, Japanese State Minister for Foreign Affairs Keisuke Suzuki visited Lebanon for the first time in three years. It seems like an unusual coincidence. 

Indeed, there are many in the Japanese government who wanted the Ghosn problem to fade away before the 2020 Olympics: “Come to Japan, and stay an extra 23 days in solitary confinement if you’re even suspected of a crime!” is not a good slogan for tourism. 

With Ghosn gone, Japan Inc.’s PR problems are gone as well. But for right now, all that the official release about Minister Suzuki’s Lebanon sojourn tells us is that he conducted “courtesy calls on President Michel Aoun… and exchanged views on various bilateral cooperation and the current situation in Lebanon.” 

We don’t know if they discussed Carlos Ghosn, but one thing is certainly clear—Carlos Ghosn is there now. He’s told us so. And he is welcome. Soon after his arrest last year, digital billboards went up all over Beirut proclaiming "WE ARE ALL CARLOS GHOSN" and "WE ARE ALL FREE," while Lebanon’s interior minister vowed “A Lebanese phoenix will not be scorched by a Japanese sun.” Meanwhile, Ghosn’s Ixsir Winery in Batroûn reportedly continues to prosper.

Here is Ghosn’s official statement sent from his media representatives: 

“I am now in Lebanon and will no longer be held hostage by a rigged Japanese justice system where guilt is presumed, discrimination is rampant, and basic human rights are denied, in flagrant disregard of Japan’s legal obligations under international law and treaties it is bound to uphold. I have not fled justice—I have escaped injustice and political persecution. I can now finally communicate freely with the media, and look forward to starting next week.”

Full disclosure: In August of this year (2019), I managed to arrange a clandestine meeting with Carlos Ghosn while working on an article for the monthly French magazine Capital. He wanted to know about the Mark Karpeles case and I agreed to discuss it with him. 

For those who aren’t familiar with the case, Karpeles was a French CEO in Japan who ran what was once the world’s biggest bitcoin exchange—until it was hacked. The police, wrongly suspecting that Karpeles was the culprit, arrested him and kept him in jail for months on other charges, hoping he would confess. He did not. Eventually he was found not guilty. The judges even scolded the prosecutors for their heavy-handed approach. 

Ghosn and I met at the Grand Hyatt and had a talk in the second-floor restaurant, The French Kitchen, in what used to be the smoking section. The conditions of our talk included a request that I not quote him directly, because, as he’d already learned, even talking about talking to journalists when you’re facing trial in Japan in a high-profile case is likely to get you put in jail. 

While I had to keep quiet (at the time), Ghosn, on the other hand, had to tell the prosecutors that he was meeting me and why. He seemed slightly distracted and a shade of his former self, but also ardent in his claims of innocence. He was very thin, his air grayer, but he had started working out with a personal trainer and there was still fire in his eyes.

He asked me if I was going to write more about his case and I told him yes. I said I had already written the first line of the article which was:

“Carlos Ghosn is an arrogant prick and there are many reasons why people in Japan and abroad don’t like him, but that doesn’t mean he’s guilty.” 

He was not amused. 

He wanted to know if the Karpeles verdict should give him hope. “Only if you believe in miracles,” I said. “However, when you tell the prosecutors you’ve been discussing his case, that will annoy them and make them unhappy. They hate being defeated, even a little bit.”

He smiled faintly.

I think that many of us, given the choice between spending the next decade in a small tatami room in solitary where the lights are never off and exercise is limited to a few times a week, versus living in our home in Beirut with easy access to our winery—would choose the latter. 

Even former special prosecutor Nobuo Gohara seems sympathetic. He tweeted after the news of Ghosn’s escape broke, “I feel sorry for his lawyers and it’s a shame he betrayed the understanding of the court. However, what is really important is what is to follow. The investigation conducted by the prosecutors in Ghosn’s case was incredible bullshit (detarame). Even if the Japanese government demands Ghosn to be extradited to Japan, do you think that will go over well with international society? I think we can say this is no longer just a problem of the law in provincial Japan.”

Now we can look forward to the movie.

 

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32389

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https://jalopnik.com/carlos-ghosn-rumored-to-escape-house-arrest-by-hiding-i-1840744533

 

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A very weird rumor floating around is saying that Carlos Ghosn, the former chairman and CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, escaped Japanese house arrest and fled to Lebanon this past weekend by reportedly hiding in a musical instrument case ahead of a trial for his alleged financial misconduct.

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Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times—one of the outlets that first reported Ghosn’s escape yesterday afternoon—wrote on Twitter that “Beirut sources” say the executive hid in a box designed for a musical instrument to escape:

 

Quote

Also working in Ghosn’s favor is that Lebanon does not have an extradition treaty with Japan, as the Washington Post notes.

 

 

 

 

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31449

Posted
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1 hour ago, Bateshorn said:

By all accounts, despite having a Western style Democracy, the Japanese judicial system would make some autocracies blush with its lack of defendant’s rights.  
 

Ghosn probably had his hand in the till at Nissan,  but the judicial reaction of the Japanese here was ridiculous overkill.

Yeah, I was going to say.  I'm reasonably sure Ghosn is a pretty big dirtbag, but Asian criminal justice systems make ours look pretty, pretty good.

All the more reason incarceration nation is puzzling and intolerable.

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31449

Posted
Posted (edited)
24 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

i loved my time in japan, and met many wonderful people there, but that country is racist as fuck. 

I suppose it's partly their isolation from other races and cultures, but they have harbored pretty virulent racism toward their Asian neighbors for a stunningly long time.

The Chinese have quite a superiority complex of their own, to boot.

"White supremacy" is not a uniquely caucasian thing.

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smokebomb

smokebomb 357

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One possible theory on how Ghosn got out:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-50964040

Quote

...

A musical escape?

One Lebanese TV channel - MTV - reported that Mr Ghosn had fled his court-approved residence in Tokyo with the assistance of a paramilitary group who were disguised amongst a band of musicians. 

It said the band had performed at his house and, shortly after they had finished, the 65-year-old hid himself in a large musical instrument case which was then hurried to a local airport. If this really happened, it may have been a tight squeeze even for Mr Ghosn, whose height is reported at 5ft 6in (167cm).

According to the MTV story, he then flew to Turkey, before arriving in Lebanon on a private jet. The broadcaster provided no proof for this theory which, unsurprisingly, spread rapidly across social media.

But donning a spy-movie disguise is not beyond Mr Ghosn. In March, in a bid to throw journalists off his scent, he left prison disguised as a construction worker. He was quickly identified, mocked in the media, and his lawyer soon apologised for the "amateur plan".

The newspaper, which cited a number of unidentified sources, said a team was carefully assembled to carry out the plot. The group reportedly included accomplices in Japan who transported Mr Ghosn from his house and onto a private jet bound for Istanbul. From there, he continued his journey to Beirut where he arrived in the early hours of 30 December.

The plane tracking site FlightRadar24 showed a a Bombardier Challenger private jet arriving at Beirut-Rafic Hariri international airport shortly after 04:00 local time. Mr Ghosn then met his wife Carole, who was born in the city and was heavily involved in the operation, the Wall Street Journal says.

Several reports have said Carole Ghosn was a major figure behind the plan for her husband to skip bail and get out of Japan. She spoke with him for more than an hour on 24 December, Mr Ghosn's Japanese lawyer said. The couple had previously been banned from meeting or communicating under Mr Ghosn's strict bail conditions.

After her husband arrived in Lebanon, Mrs Ghosn told the Wall Street Journal that their reunion was "the best gift of my life". She has not commented on her alleged involvement in the operation.

Earlier this year she told the BBC: "I want my husband back. I want him with me. I know he is innocent."

Carlos Ghosn grew up in Lebanon, owns property there and is a popular figure. He even appeared on one of the country's postage stamps. 

He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. 

Three passports 

Questions remain about the documents Mr Ghosn used to enter Lebanon. He holds three passports - Brazilian, French and Lebanese - but his legal team maintain that they were in possession of all of them when he left Japan. 

It is not known whether Mr Ghosn was holding duplicate passports - as businesspeople are sometimes allowed to do. It has also been reported that he may have had a diplomatic passport issued by Lebanon although this has not been confirmed.

While the French newspaper Le Monde said he travelled on an ID card, others have reported that he may have used a French passport or even a false identity with forged documents. Lebanon's foreign ministry has not said what passport Mr Ghosn travelled on but it has insisted that he entered the country legally. 

The embarrassment caused by Mr Ghosn's flight soon sparked a reaction from Japan. One Japanese politician asked whether he "had the support of some country". A former governor of Tokyo was more forthright, accusing Lebanon of direct involvement.

"The government has nothing to do with [Mr Ghosn's] decision to come," Lebanese minister Salim Jreissati was quoted as saying by the New York Times. "We don't know the circumstances of his arrival." France and Turkey have also said they were unaware of Mr Ghosn's plan. 

There is no extradition deal between Japan and Lebanon, which means the future of Mr Ghosn's trial is now fraught with uncertainty. 

Japan gives millions in aid to Lebanon and will likely want Mr Ghosn returned. But it will no doubt have to answer further questions about how such a high-profile suspect was able to get out of the country in the first place.

 

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Onboard 2.0

Onboard 2.0 9083

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Posted
9 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

I suppose it's partly their isolation from other races and cultures, but they have harbored pretty virulent racism toward their Asian neighbors for a stunningly long time.

The Chinese have quite a superiority complex of their own, to boot.

"White supremacy" is not a uniquely caucasian thing.

This just can't be true. I've been told time and again on this site that white people are the real racists in the world.

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Guest Lobo

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"Carlos Ghosn who once found himself trapped in a dire scenario scripted by the Japanese government, Tokyo prosecutors, and a dubious faction of Nissan, has rewritten the narrative."

Well, well, well...the Datsun boys' 40 year long game has finally come to fruition.  A dubious play, indeed.  

 

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32389

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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nissan-ghosn-raid/lebanon-receives-interpol-arrest-warrant-for-ghosn-idUSKBN1Z107L

 

Quote

Lebanon received an Interpol arrest warrant on Thursday for former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn, while Turkey launched an investigation into his daring escape from Japan via Istanbul.

Ghosn has become an international fugitive after he revealed on Tuesday he had fled to Lebanon to escape what he called a “rigged” justice system in Japan, where he faces charges relating to alleged financial crimes.

 

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Sources close to Ghosn said a delay to a trial and a strict ban on communicating with his wife motivated him to go ahead with a plan to use a private security company to smuggle him out of Japan via private jet.

The Interpol red notice, which calls on authorities to arrest a wanted person, was received by Lebanon’s internal security forces and has yet to be referred to the judiciary, a Lebanese judicial source told Reuters.

A senior Lebanese security official said it was not yet clear if Ghosn would be summoned for questioning over the warrant but said Lebanon does not extradite its citizens to foreign states.

 

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In past cases, where Lebanon has received red notices for Lebanese citizens resident in the country, the suspects have not been detained but their passports have been confiscated and bail has been set, the judicial source said.

Ghosn, who holds French, Lebanese and Brazilian citizenship, has deep ties to Lebanon, the country of his childhood, where his investments include a stake in a bank, real estate and a vineyard.

 

Quote

Turkish police on Thursday detained seven people, including four pilots, as part of an investigation into Ghosn’s passage through the country, a police spokeswoman said.

She said the other detainees were two airport ground staff and one cargo worker and all seven were expected to give statements in court on Thursday.

Flight tracking data suggests Ghosn used two different planes to fly to Istanbul and then to Lebanon.

 

 

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32389

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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-renault-nissan-ghosn-lebanon/ghosn-met-lebanese-president-after-fleeing-japan-sources-idUSKBN1Z01WD

 

Quote

Fugitive former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn met Lebanon’s president after fleeing from Japan, where he was smuggled out of house arrest by a private security company, two sources close to Ghosn said on Wednesday.

 

Quote

One of the sources said Ghosn was greeted warmly by President Michel Aoun on Monday after flying into Beirut via Istanbul and was now in a buoyant and combative mood and felt secure.

The plan to slip Ghosn out of Japan, which marked the latest twist in a year-old saga that has shaken the global auto industry, was crafted over three months, the two sources said.

“It was a very professional operation from start to finish,” one of them said.

 

Quote

While some Lebanese media have floated a Houdini-like account of Ghosn being packed in a wooden container for musical instruments after a private concert in his home, his wife called the account “fiction” when contacted by Reuters.

She declined to provide details of the exit of one of the most recognized titans of industry. The accounts of the two sources suggest a carefully planned escape known only to a few.

They said a private security firm oversaw the plan, which involved shuttling Ghosn out via a private jet to Istanbul before pushing onward to Beirut, with even the pilot unaware of Ghosn’s presence on board.

 

Quote

An attorney for Ghosn said he would hold a news conference in Beirut on Jan. 8. The sources close to Ghosn, however, said a date for the news conference had yet to be finalised. They said Ghosn was unwilling to share details of his escape so as not to jeopardizes those who aided him in Japan.

 

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9431

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The es­cape plan was un­der way by Sat­ur­day, Dec. 28, in Dubai. That was where, ac­cord­ing to flight man­i­fests and im­mi­gra­tion records now part of the Turk­ish probe, Mr. Tay­lor and an­other man boarded a Bom­bardier Global Ex­press pri­vate jet bound for Japan. Dubai was also where two large black cases were loaded for the red-eye flight. The plane ar­rived at Os­a­ka’s busiest air­port at 10:16 a.m. lo­cal time Sun­day, ac­cord­ing to flight records.

Japan’s Asahi news­pa­per, cit­ing Ja­panese in­ves­tiga­tive sources, said sur­veillance footage showed Mr. Ghosn leav­ing his Tokyo house alone at 2:30 p.m. Sun­day, wear­ing a hat and a sur­gi­cal-style mask used widely in Japan to pro­tect from germs. That would have been less than nine hours be­fore his plane left Japan.

How he trav­eled the more than 300 miles to Os­aka from Tokyo is still a mys­tery. It also hadn’t been known pre­vi­ously how Mr. Ghosn was able to board the pri­vate jet as he was barred from leav­ing the coun­try. Kenji Takan­ishi, a spokesman for the op­er­a­tor of Os­a­ka’s Kan­sai In­ternational Air­port, said lug­gage for pri­vate planes goes through the same in­spec­tion as pas­sen­gers’ lug­gage for reg­u­lar com­mer­cial jets. How­ever, he said VIPs were some­times ex­empted from such checks.

The con­tainer used to sneak Mr. Ghosn aboard had holes drilled at the bot­tom to en­sure he could breathe, ac­cord­ing to peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter. It also had wheels, typ­i­cal for such cases, mak­ing it eas­ier to move around.

...

Mr. Ghosn has been spend­ing time in a pink man­sion in Beirut that Nis­san bought and ren­o­vated for his use when he worked for the Ja­panese car maker, ac­cord­ing to a per­son fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter. Nis­san has been try­ing to evict the Ghosns from the house since shortly af­ter the auto ex­ec­u­tive’s ar­rest in late 2018, but so far they have been able to stay.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/carlos-ghosn-sneaked-out-of-japan-in-box-used-for-audio-gear-11578077647?emailToken=6ea36ec72d571591af5f64767604c218nN2tK7tFq5mw7rAOoOCBiYQsB+D1zhYIEkqldystvWGfHOpCuvIC2Y7MjS6atvlILcuy81TofWypemlta/9VaDGZx6gNDZwqK6+g+qdAScyY42Fdyacgu9pVmkmHs294&reflink=article_copyURL_share

Helluva story


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Parliament

Parliament 14255

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In case that WSJ story is stuck behind a paywall.

A 65-year-old former automobile industry big-wig with Brazilian, French and Lebanese passports escaped Japan over the weekend by extraordinary means.

Carlos Ghosn, a 5’5″ former top executive for companies like Mitsubishi, Michelin, Renault and Nissan, was facing financial charges at the time he somehow escaped from his constantly surveilled Tokyo apartment to Istanbul, Turkey, wherefrom he managed to make it home to Beirut, Lebanon — a place that does not have an extradition treaty with Japan.

The whole ordeal smacked of cinema from the start, but the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that men with U.S. passports and names “matching those of American security contractors accompanied […] Ghosn out of Japan after he was slipped aboard a private jet inside a large black case, typically used to carry audio gear.”

One of those names? Michael Taylor. The Journal identified him as a former U.S. Green Beret and private security contractor who in recent years had a run-in with the law himself:

 

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/former-auto-executives-escape-from-japan-was-even-crazier-than-initially-known/

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Cajun

Cajun 11705

Posted
Posted (edited)

I'm sorry Mr. Ghosn, I appreciate you bein' friends of Corporal Klinger and all,  but you just can't stay.  I mean, we got ourselves a toddler here!

ariz05.jpg

How do you say, "Why don't you breastfeed him?" in Lebanese?

Edited by Cajun
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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32389

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Posted

Going after his wife now.  A strong (or desperate) move.  Also, the wife is an American citizen....and the US can extradite her back to Japan.

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nissan-ghosn-statement/japan-issues-arrest-warrant-for-ghosns-wife-looks-for-ways-to-bring-him-back-idUSKBN1Z6057

 

Quote

Japanese prosecutors on Tuesday issued an arrest warrant for Carlos Ghosn’s wife for alleged perjury, as officials stepped up efforts to bring the fugitive car industry boss back to face trial on financial misconduct charges.

 

Quote

The former Nissan Motor, and Renault chairman fled to Lebanon last month from Japan, where he has alleged there was a government-backed coup to oust him.

A senior Japanese Ministry of Justice official said staff were poring over Lebanese laws to find a way to bring back Ghosn and that Japan “will do whatever it can” to put him on trial.

 

Quote

In Beirut, the justice minister confirmed that prosecutors had received a “red notice” arrest warrant from Interpol in respect of Ghosn and would take the necessary action.

The ministry said nothing had been received from Japanese prosecutors relating to an arrest warrant for his wife, Carole, who is in the Lebanese capital.

The Japanese warrant accuses her of falsely claiming not to know, or to have met, people connected to a company that received payments from Nissan Motor, part of which it subsequently transferred to a firm owned by Ghosn.

 

 

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