Ghosn legal team plans ‘massive' offensive

BEIRUT — Over the past year, the former chairman of Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi was jailed, then muzzled. Now that he's free, Carlos Ghosn is threatening to go after the parties that accused him of crimes and stripped him of his corporate positions.

Ghosn, on the lam in Lebanon after jumping bail in Japan, will explore "massive" countermeasures against those he says have wronged him, said his French lawyer Francois Zimeray.

Zimeray didn't rule out any actions. Possible moves could involve civil suits or other complaints, in Japan or elsewhere, and are precedented by a case filed last year by Ghosn in the Netherlands.

"There are many actions to launch now," Zimeray told Automotive News last week after Ghosn gave a combative press conference here — his first with the media since his November 2018 arrest in Tokyo.

"This paves the way for a counterattack, which will be legitimate and massive," said Zimeray, in attendance at the event in Beirut. Ghosn fled to Lebanon in a coordinated, cloak-and-dagger getaway at the end of December to escape what he calls injustice and political persecution in Japan.

Ghosn had been awaiting trial in Tokyo on charges of financial misconduct and faced up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

Zimeray said Ghosn's legal team has not decided what measures to take or whom they will target. But, he said, "We are ready to go further now and hit."

At the press conference, Ghosn said clearing his name and reestablishing his reputation were the top priorities, even if that meant standing trial in another jurisdiction. Ghosn said he would face a court in any country except Japan, which he said has a rigged justice system.

"I can do a lot, and I want to clear my name," Ghosn said. "You can expect me in the next weeks to take some initiatives."

Zimeray, a former French ambassador and a high-profile attorney who specializes in human rights issues, said a big focus will be fighting what critics call a routine system of "hostage justice" in Japan. Activists claim that Japanese legal customs, such as extended jail detainment without charge and interrogations without an attorney, are meant to pressure confessions, and violate the civil rights guaranteed under some Western legal systems.

In the weeks following his arrest, Ghosn was held in a spartan Japanese jail cell with little contact with the outside world and limited access to his lawyers. Investigators were able to interrogate Ghosn several hours a day without the presence of an attorney.

Japanese prosecutors also made strategic use of a legal provision that allowed them to rearrest Ghosn, once he was released on bail, on related charges. That practice allows prosecutors to detain a suspect for weeks or even months as they build a case or push for a confession.

Japan's 99 percent criminal conviction rate sounds impressive. But in recent years, suspects in some 91 percent of those cases had confessed before heading to trial.

"In Japan, where the rate of conviction is 99.5 percent, and even more for foreigners, it's not a machine for judging," said Zimeray. "It's a machine for convicting."

The prospect now of a legal campaign by Ghosn over his removal as chairman of the global Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance certainly would create new embarrassment for Nissan as it tries to put the Ghosn scandal behind it. Ghosn's promised counterattack also could shine an unflattering light on Japan's justice system as the government and prosecutors scramble to deflect international criticism.

A hint of what might be in store is the $17.8 million lawsuit Ghosn filed last year in a Dutch court against Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. In that pending case, Ghosn accuses the two affiliated automakers of improperly firing him from their Netherlands-based joint venture, Nissan-Mitsubishi BV. According to Ghosn's attorneys, Dutch law requires that, before firing an executive, a company must first inform him of its plan to do so and provide him with evidence of the accusations.

The Dutch suit claims that neither of those conditions was met.

Nissan and Mitsubishi said in January 2019 that Ghosn received about €7.82 million ($8.9 million) in improper compensation from the joint venture. The entity was established as a 50-50 venture to reward employees at both companies who find synergies by giving them a share of the savings. But Nissan and Mitsubishi claim Ghosn used the entity to authorize large payouts to himself.