Carlos Ghosn Offers Higher Bail and Security Guards in Bid to Be Freed From Jail

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/20/business/carlos-ghosn-bail-japan.html

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TOKYO — Carlos Ghosn, the embattled global auto executive who has spent the last two months jailed in Japan, is offering to post a higher bail amount and personally pay for an apartment in Tokyo along with private security guards as he prepares a case seeking his release before trial.

Mr. Ghosn, 64, who has been charged on three counts of financial misconduct at Nissan Motor, the Japanese auto company he led for two decades, was denied bail by a Tokyo court last week. The court rejected an appeal by his lawyers, who made a new bail application to the district court in Tokyo on Friday.

“As the court considers my bail application, I want to emphasize that I will reside in Japan and respect any and all bail conditions the court concludes are warranted,” Mr. Ghosn said in a statement released to the news media on Monday morning.

Mr. Ghosn, until recently the head of the car-making alliance of Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi, is making new assurances in support of his bail request in Tokyo as Renault, the French automaker, is preparing to cut ties with him under pressure from the French government, a shareholder in Renault.

Tokyo prosecutors have charged Mr. Ghosn, who was a rare foreign celebrity executive leading a Japanese company, with understating his income for years and with improperly transferring personal investment losses to Nissan’s books in 2008. In a court appearance this month, Mr. Ghosn declared he was innocent of all allegations.

Since he was arrested coming off a corporate jet in Tokyo on Nov. 19, Mr. Ghosn has been detained in a small cell, and questioned daily by prosecutors without his lawyer present. He has been cut off from any direct contact with his family, and until last week he was allowed to see only his Japanese lawyer and diplomats from Brazil, France and Lebanon, countries in which he holds citizenship. His wife, Carole Ghosn, wrote last week to Human Rights Watch, a global advocacy group, saying her husband had been “callously and needlessly detained by the authorities in Japan.”

When Mr. Ghosn appeared before a judge this month to exercise his legal right to request that the court explain its reasoning for approving his continued detention, the judge said Mr. Ghosn was viewed as a possible flight risk and could conceal evidence.

In his statement on Monday, Mr. Ghosn said that if released on bail, he was committed to appearing at his trial.

“I will attend my trial not only because I am legally obligated to do so, but because I am eager to finally have the opportunity to defend myself,” he said. “Nothing is more important to me or to my family.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Ghosn’s family, Devon Spurgeon, said the family had leased an apartment in Tokyo where he would stay while awaiting trial. This month, Nissan terminated the lease on the $12,750-a-month apartment in Tokyo that Mr. Ghosn used as chairman.

Ms. Spurgeon said Mr. Ghosn was also offering to pay a higher bail amount by offering as collateral Nissan stock not listed in his original bail application. He would also wear and pay for the cost of an electric ankle bracelet as well as hire private security guards approved by prosecutors to monitor him. Mr. Ghosn would surrender all his passports and refrain from talking to potential witnesses in his case.

Along with Mr. Ghosn, Tokyo prosecutors have indicted his close aide Greg Kelly, a former human resources executive and member of Nissan’s board, on charges he underreported Mr. Ghosn’s income. Mr. Kelly was released on bail of 70 million yen, or about $640,000, on Christmas Day. He has undergone surgery for spinal stenosis in Tokyo and is now living in an apartment in the city.