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Carlos Ghosn, Former Nissan Chairman, Has Bail Request Granted in Japan Carlos Ghosn, Former Nissan Chairman, Is Granted Bail Request in Japan
(about 1 hour later)
TOKYO — A Tokyo court on Tuesday granted a request for bail by Carlos Ghosn, the former auto executive facing charges of financial wrongdoing in Japan, his lawyer’s office said.TOKYO — A Tokyo court on Tuesday granted a request for bail by Carlos Ghosn, the former auto executive facing charges of financial wrongdoing in Japan, his lawyer’s office said.
The court set his bail at 1 billion yen, or almost $9 million.The court set his bail at 1 billion yen, or almost $9 million.
Mr. Ghosn, 64, who was until recently head of the alliance that united Nissan and Mitsubishi of Japan and Renault of France, was indicted on charges of underreporting his income by more than $80 million. He denies the allegations. Mr. Ghosn, 64, who was until recently head of the alliance that united Nissan Motor, Mitsubishi Motors of Japan and Renault of France, had his bail request granted more than two months after he was indicted on charges of underreporting his income by more than $80 million and improperly saddling Nissan with his personal investment losses. He denies the allegations.
Prosecutors are expected to appeal the court’s decision, and a ruling could come later Tuesday. Prosecutors are expected to appeal the court’s decision, and a ruling could come on Tuesday.
Prosecutors have been questioning Mr. Ghosn for more than three months. He has spent more than three months in jail since his arrest on Nov. 19 and been refused bail twice. Mr. Ghosn, who was arrested on Nov. 19 as he stepped off a corporate jet at a Tokyo airport, has been held in jail for 107 days as prosecutors work to build their case against him.
In an interview with Nikkei Asian Review, Mr. Ghosn blamed rivals at Nissan for misrepresenting facts to prosecutors and removing him as chairman of the company he helped rescue nearly two decades ago. He said that he had wanted to unite the three alliance partners in “autonomy under one holding company.” It is his third bail request, and the first by his new legal team, headed by Junichiro Hironaka — a high-profile defense lawyer famous for winning acquittal for clients caught up in some of the country’s toughest legal battles.
“People translated strong leadership to dictator, to distort reality” for the “purpose of getting rid of me,” he said in the interview, the first since he was arrested. The Tokyo district court rejected the requests by Mr. Ghosn’s previous legal team after prosecutors voiced concerns that the former auto executive was a flight risk and might tamper with evidence.
At a news conference on Monday, Mr. Hironaka said that he had proposed to the court that, as a condition of his bail, Mr. Ghosn would be kept under guard and have limited access to outside information.
“We have suggested further measures that have suggested he could still be under watch, limiting his activities during his release,” he said.
The prosecutor’s office declined to comment on the court’s decision.
The length and nature of Mr. Ghosn’s detention has cast a critical light on Japan’s criminal justice system, a point that Mr. Hironaka hammered home in his remarks Monday.
At one point in mid-December, Mr. Ghosn appeared to be on the verge of being released after the court refused a request by prosecutors to extend his detention, opening the possibility that he could receive bail. But in an unusual move, the authorities rearrested Mr. Ghosn on a new charge — breach of trust — asserting that he had transferred losses incurred during the 2008 financial crisis to Nissan.
The case is a stark contrast to that of Mr. Ghosn’s close aide, Greg Kelly, whom prosecutors charged with helping the executive conceal his income. Unlike Mr. Ghosn, Mr. Kelly was granted bail of 70 million yen on Christmas Day. He is currently living in an apartment in Tokyo after undergoing a medical procedure to treat a spinal condition.
During his time in jail, Mr. Ghosn is said to have lost a significant amount of weight, raising concerns about his treatment. In a statement on Monday that appeared to be timed with Mr. Ghosn’s bail request a few days earlier, his family said they planned to appeal to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights over the conditions of his detention.
In a January interview with Nikkei Asian Review, Ghosn said that the charges against him were due to “plot and treason” by executives at Nissan who had misrepresented his actions in an attempt to prevent him from bringing the company further under Renault’s control.
The approval of the bail request is a rare piece of good news for Mr. Ghosn, who has been shown no quarter since his arrest. Nissan’s board dismissed Mr. Ghosn as its chairman in late November, shortly after his arrest, and Mitsubishi followed soon after. He resigned from Renault in January.