Ghosn ‘still in the game,' looking to rebuild rep

The most nerve-racking moment of Carlos Ghosn's daring getaway from Japan came as airport security in Osaka debated whether to X-ray the trunk in which he was hiding.

Ghosn, scrunched up inside, could hear the officials deliberating but couldn't tell which way the decision would go. They were speaking Japanese.

If they scanned that trunk, he'd be sunk.

Ghosn took a deep breath. The talking stopped, and the trunk resumed its rolling. Only then did he realize he finally made it. Ghosn was loaded onto a private jet and spirited to freedom.

"This is the single most important decision that had an impact on my life," Ghosn told Automotive News of that make-or-break moment to wave his box through. Because of that decision, the international fugitive says he is now free to start rehabilitating his reputation.

In a wide-ranging video interview from Lebanon last week, the ousted Nissan Motor Co. chairman said he is stepping up the campaign to reclaim his legacy as one of the industry's most famous executives. Ghosn also dished plenty of trash talk about Nissan, branding it a "boring" company "no one cares about" and calling its 22-year alliance with French automaker Renault a "zombie" that will soon keel over.

His counterattack includes the publication last month of a tell-all book on the saga, Broken Alliances. Ghosn says he already is planning a second book that will dive even deeper into the conspiracy he says took him down as head of the Franco-Japanese alliance.

Ghosn is busy working on documentaries, teaching university seminars, doing interviews and planning legal strategy with a team of lawyers that spans the globe. The fallen auto icon even says he keeps a toe in the industry and is regularly approached by startups for consulting help.

"I'm still in the game," Ghosn said in an Oct. 13 sit-down from the study of his Beirut residence.

Ghosn said he won't be a major auto player, attributing that partly to his age, 67.

"But it doesn't mean that I would not be a kind of adviser or consultant or eventually a board member to pursue my contribution to the industry," Ghosn said. "I'm involved in a lot of startup stuff now. I am involved in the auto industry. I do a lot of conferences, my advice is still sought, I make a lot of consultancies. I follow this industry; I've lived this industry."

Ghosn didn't name any startups he's working with or consulting partners. And his path to directorship in the U.S., at any rate, would be a long one. As part of a settlement he signed in 2019 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, in which he admitted no guilt, Ghosn received a $1 million penalty and was barred from being an officer or director at a publicly traded U.S. company for 10 years.

As Ghosn nears the three-year anniversary of his shocking arrest at Tokyo's Haneda airport on Nov. 19, 2018, the legal battles engulfing him and others wrapped up in the saga still rage.

Ghosn maintains his innocence but faces four indictments in Japan on charges of financial misconduct spanning nearly a decade during his time at the helm of Nissan.

After jumping bail in Japan and fleeing to Lebanon in December 2019, Ghosn is still on Interpol's wanted list, grounded from international travel and stuck in his ancestral homeland.

Meanwhile, the American father-son team that helped engineer Ghosn's made-for-Hollywood escape in an oversized concert equipment case was extradited to Japan and sentenced to prison in July.

American Greg Kelly, the former Nissan director who was arrested the same day as Ghosn and charged as an accomplice in some of the alleged financial misconduct, is still on trial in Tokyo.

Nissan has filed a civil suit against Ghosn in Yokohama, seeking $100 million in damages. And Ghosn is considering a countersuit against the company he once revived from near bankruptcy.

And other legal troubles are swirling in France, the Netherlands and even the British Virgin Islands.

Just last week, Ghosn said, he opened a new legal front in Lebanon by filing a complaint against certain Nissan executives, the company's external law firm and the Tokyo Prosecutors Office.

Ghosn said the complaint asserts that people working for these parties fraudulently entered Lebanon on tourist visas, illegally searched his residence without a warrant and unlawfully seized documents, electronic devices and electronic data.

The Beirut raid was part of a swoop on Ghosn's residences in Tokyo, Amsterdam and Rio de Janeiro at the time of his arrest.

"There was no warrant; there was nothing," Ghosn said. "They just took whatever they wanted, in the most mafia-style way, and then sent everything back to the Tokyo prosecutor. … We are contesting not only the way they got these documents but the authenticity of the documents."

Separately, Nissan's ¥91 billion ($801.5 million) civil case against Ghosn in Japan is proceeding at a snail's pace. Lawyers from both sides had a brief procedural hearing Oct. 15; the next is in late January.

Among Nissan's claims, the automaker is seeking $22 million in damages from Ghosn, which it cites as the cost of the legal and investigative fees of looking into and pursuing his alleged misconduct, according to Ghosn's defense attorney, Nobuo Gohara.

Gohara said the outcome of the criminal case against Kelly could have a big influence on Ghosn's own civil case.

Kelly's verdict is expected in March, and if he is acquitted, that will strengthen Ghosn's hand in the Nissan case and clear a path for possible countersuits.

But the three-year window to file a countersuit would close sometime next spring, meaning that waiting for a Kelly verdict runs the risk of having the statute of limitations expire, Gohara said.

"We are considering, but have yet to file, a countersuit," Gohara said. "So, if we decide to file a countersuit, we will have to do so by next spring. We have only about six months left."

Prosecutors are seeking a two-year prison sentence for Kelly, 65, if he's found guilty.

Ghosn offered a dim outlook for the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance he spent nearly two decades building into what was at one point the world's largest auto group. Renault and Nissan, he said, are at risk without a shared vision and inspired centralized leadership.

All three alliance partners are racing to return to profitability in the current fiscal year, after slumping to losses in the wake of Ghosn's arrest and seeing their global sales implode. The three have announced little in the way of joint projects since early 2020, when the companies decided to carve up world markets into spheres of influence under a new "leader-follower" strategy.

Ghosn predicted Renault and Nissan eventually would sell off the cross-holdings that bind them together but have been a frequent source of tension in a sometimes topsy-turvy partnership.

"The fact is that the alliance is a zombie now," he said. "They're not working together. And then when they aren't working together, automatically the shares are going to be sold. Ultimately it will happen."

As for that tense time in the box with security, when Ghosn took the gamble of his life?

"You are not thinking about the past or the future. You are totally concentrated on the present moment," he said. "No other feelings, like I was sweating, I was hot, I was claustrophobic. All that disappears. You're just single-minded: I want out. I want to be out to fight this injustice."

Naoto Okamura contributed to this report.