Japan tries to solve the mystery of Carlos Ghosn’s bold escape

Tokyo / Hong Kong (CNN Business) – The Japanese authorities raided the house where the fugitive car executive Carlos Ghosn was before escaping to Lebanon earlier this week, possibly through Turkey.

Japanese media reported that Tokyo district prosecutors entered the property on Thursday. TV Asahi, a subsidiary of CNN, also reported that prosecutors were working with the police to access the video Surveillance at home as part of your investigation.

Ghosn, former president of Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors, and former president and chief executive officer of his alliance partner, Renault, was awaiting a trial in Japan on charges of financial irregularities, including allegations that he underestimated his income for years and diverted $ 5 million. of dollars from Nissan’s money to a car dealership he controlled. He was dismissed from his positions at Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors after his arrest in November 2018, and then resigned from Renault.

As a condition to be released on bail, Ghosn was required to remain in Japan. But his case took a full turn earlier this week after Ghosn revealed that he had fled from Japan to Lebanon to escape what he called a “manipulated” justice system.

Journalists wait outside the residence of former Nissan president Carlos Ghosn before a raid in Tokyo on Thursday, January 2, 2020.

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It is still unclear how Ghosn, who is a citizen of France, Brazil and Lebanon, was able to escape from Japan. Reuters and the Financial Times reported that a private security company smuggled it from Tokyo, a plot that media organizations say took months to prepare.

The governor of Istanbul said in a statement Thursday that Turkish police arrested seven people in connection with an investigation into the “illegal escape” of Ghosn from Japan. The agency of news Anadolu said Ghosn traveled through the city’s Ataturk airport. Police detained four pilots from a private airline, a company manager and two land employees at the request of the Istanbul prosecutor, according to a statement from the governor’s office.

The Flightradar24 flight tracker showed that a private plane was flying from Osaka, Japan, to Istanbul and then another that continued to Lebanon at the time it is said that Ghosn arrived in the country.

CNN Business has not been able to verify the circumstances behind its departure, and Ghosn gave no further details about his escape in his public statement earlier this week.

Japan’s ministry of justice, the Tokyo prosecutor’s office and the city’s district court have not responded to CNN Business’s requests this week to comment on Ghosn’s escape. Government offices are closed this week for the New Year holiday.

Carlos Ghosn (AP Photo / Eugene Hoshiko, File)

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Legal experts and political analysts say Japan is probably trying to find out if Ghosn violated the law of immigration when he left the country, and it is not that there are many possibilities to force him to return.

Prosecutors in Tokyo are now probably reviewing Ghosn’s movements across Japan, collecting surveillance images and looking for potential collaborators, said Nobuo Gohara, a former prosecutor who now runs a legal and compliance office in Japan.

Gohara added that Ghosn’s trial will almost certainly be canceled. The most important question, he said, is how the Japanese authorities will respond to Ghosn’s attacks on them, now that he can speak freely about his detention.

Ghosn has repeatedly denied the charges against him, and claimed that his arrest was part of a plot to get him out of the automotive empire he built. In his statement this week, he said that “I would no longer be held hostage to a manipulated Japanese justice system where guilt is presumed, the discrimination It is rampant and basic human rights are denied. ”

Japan cannot force Lebanon to send Ghosn back, said Keith Henry, founder and managing director of Asia Strategy, a research firm and politics based in Tokyo. The two countries have no extradition agreement.

“It is a major problem for [el primer ministro de Japón Shinzo] Abe and Japan than for Ghosn, ”said Henry. “No matter what they do now, it is very difficult to overcome the shame of letting go of one of the highest profile suspects” of a corporate scandal since Japan’s economic boom that came after World War II.

CNN’s Isil Sariyuce in Istanbul contributed to this article.

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