Suspicions of embezzlement, through the distributor in the Middle East of Renault and Nissan, weighs on the former boss who has taken refuge in Lebanon.
French justice has issued an international arrest warrant against Carlos Ghosn, the former boss of Renault and Nissan who has taken refuge in Lebanon since his escape from Japan at the end of December 2019. This warrant, as revealed by the Wall Street Journal, was issued by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Nanterre, where Judge Serge Tournaire, alongside the Financial Public Prosecutor’s Office, is investigating the elements of the case mainly resulting from reports brought to the attention of justice by the Renault group. Judicial information was opened against X in February 2020 by the Nanterre prosecutor’s office, for abuse of corporate assets and money laundering, and was extended last July to the head of “corruption”.
“I’m ready to defend myself“, he hammered again this Friday, denouncing the words of “French government officials saying they trust Japanese justice despite all the facts that show it is unreliable”. For its part, the Renault group, a civil party since February 2020 in this case and which had never spoken until now, “takes note of the decision of the magistrates”told AFP his lawyer, Me Kami Haeri. “This is a major step which can be explained by the seriousness of the new facts which have been brought to light following meticulous investigations bringing to light hidden financial relations involving several million euros between Carlos Ghosn and the founders and SBA leaders”he added.
Read alsoHow Nissan staged Carlos Ghosn’s downfall
The warrant issued by the French courts does not change much in the first analysis in the situation of Carlos Ghosn. The ex-boss, who has triple French, Lebanese and Brazilian nationality, lives in Beirut, in the house that Nissan had bought from its former leader, in a country that does not extradite its nationals.
The French investigating judges had heard him on the spot on May 31 and June 1, 2021. Since then, summonses for Carlos Ghosn to be heard in France have been launched, to which he has always opposed his inability to travel; he is the subject of a “red notice” with Interpol at the request of the Japanese authorities. Indicted for several counts in Tokyo, Ghosn was never tried there because of his escape. Only his former collaborator Greg Kelly, the American arrested at the same time as him on November 19, 2018, went to court. He was sentenced in early March to a suspended six-month prison sentence, and was able to return to the United States immediately.
“They seem to consider that I am free but I am dependent on the Lebanese justice which forbids me to leave the territory and which took away my passports”, repeated Carlos Ghosn, this Friday. Questioned by BFM, he denounced the summons issued by the investigating judge last December “while knowing that I cannot leave the territory”. “I hope that good cooperation between France and Lebanon will put an end to this nightmare”he added.
Read alsoFirst meeting between Carlos Ghosn and French justice
The Nanterre public prosecutor’s office does not, however, only seek to hear Carlos Ghosn through this mandate which is worth indictment. Four warrants were also issued concerning the directors of Suhail Bahwan Automobiles (SBA), the distributor of Renault and Nissan in the Middle East. The founder of SBA, his two sons and the current managing director are targeted. The French investigations are therefore narrowing down on the aspect of the Ghosn affair nicknamed “the road to Oman”, less media-friendly but more serious than the questions relating to the receptions organized at Versailles.
“The Road to Oman”
The suspicion weighing on Carlos Ghosn is schematically that of a circuit of embezzlement of the funds of the two manufacturers for his personal benefit. Renault, and especially Nissan, would each have paid undue commissions to SBA, which would in fact have “returned” them to Carlos Ghosn through investments made by its former managing director in a Lebanese company, Good Faith Investments, which co-invested with Ghosn and his family, in particular for the purchase of a yacht, the “Shachou” whose ownership Nissan and Carlos Ghosn are now disputing in court in the Virgin Islands. In the French section, 15 million euros of disputed payments are in question.
Carlos Ghosn has always pleaded his innocence in this part of the case as in the others, but without ever expanding on his personal investment activities and the reasons for his business relations, at least in conflict of interest, with the CEO of SBA. “No transfer from SBA directly or indirectly benefited me or any member of my family. It is up to the prosecution (Japanese, editor’s note) to prove what they are saying, and they are unable to do so.wrote Carlos Ghosn in his book The time of truthpublished in 2020. “If I am not mistaken, Mr. Kumar can freely dispose of his own money”. The defense of the former boss of Renault and Nissan also insists on the weight of SBA in automobile distribution in the Middle East. In fact, the group remains to this day and despite the accusations, a distributor of Nissan in the Middle East.
“I answered all their questions”
The other angle of Carlos Ghosn’s defense is to question the conditions under which certain evidence used by the prosecution in Japan and transmitted to French justice was obtained. Some documents were indeed found in a computer seized, at the time of Ghosn’s arrest in Lebanon, by Nissan’s lawyers in Lebanon. A complaint has been filed by Carlos Ghosn’s teams on this point, in Lebanon. Asked by the Parisian in mid-February about his hearing by the French judges at the beginning of the year, Carlos Ghosn had also replied: “I answered all their questions, for three days, except those based on a document stolen in Lebanon by Nissan, a computer hard drive, taken to Japan, possibly modified, transmitted to the Japanese prosecutor who in turn transmitted it to the French judges”.
“The facts are against me, it’s a plot in which the big losers are me but also Renault”, he denounced this Friday. Asked about his activities in Lebanon, Carlos Ghosn explained that he worked at the university, helped Lebanese start-ups and that he was “involved in NGOs that help relieve a number of sufferings due to the economic, social and financial situation of the dramatic country”. And to specify: “I spend a lot of time on my files. I write books and I participate in films as part of the restoration of my reputation and the truth”.