The Wild Story of How Nissan’s CEO Became A Wanted Fugitive

Don't think he is innocent but i do believe Japan and Nissan tried to backstab him for various reasons.

The Japanese prosecutors pulled some pretty outrageous stuff, like demanding that he have no contact with his wife while under house arrest. Stunts like that are what you pull when you've got no case and you just want to bring someone to the point where they'll plea to any deal proposed in order to just make it stop. It happens in the US as well, but usually not to those with a public profile. The FBI even has a word for it: bumperlock - when they don't have enough to make a case, so they disrupt someone's life with overt surveillance and hope that it drives them to actually break the law.

I've been a long term observer of the car industry. Still remember when Nissan & Carlos used to stream their annual report meetings live on YT yearly, & I watched with great interest. The turnaround of Nissan was remarkable under his reign. At least in the first 2/3 of his tenure. Things started to go pear shaped with the unsuccessful collaboration with Daimler, the global material/ fuel price pressure (not his fault) on the Russian & South American ventures, the discontent among the conservative senior managements on committing into full EV before anyone else as a major carmaker. (Tesla was barely holding up as a carmaker than) All the factors above & a few more I haven't listed wasn't great. But I don't believe it's the reason of his downfall. The real reason is the moment he signalled to a change of governing structure within the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Group. This new structure would in essence forego the independence of Nissan. For years Renault & Nissan in name are the same group but operate largely as separate entities. Here is my honest opinion. I believe Carlos has certainly did all that was alleged. But at the same time I also believe Nissan knew it all along & let him get away with it. I do believe Nissan collaborate with the Japanese government to act the moment they found out their independence is at risk. People underestimate there are certain cultural line you simply don't cross in Japan.

I think you missed out on a lot of information in this video. Such as the takeover attempt by Hari Nada, or the fact that one of the top Nissan Lawyers had his Tokyo house raided and was let go from his position, when he found out that other Japanese Nissan officials were also stealing money.

By exporting their culture through anime, manga, video games, etc, the Japanese have managed to promote themselves in a positive manner. Japan as a country is something else though, especially their judiciary.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Many of Mr. Ghosn's perks are things that would be classified as taxable perks in most countries. Having a private jet as a company perk isn't cheap, so one would quickly accrue a sizable tax debt. Nissan probably knew about these dishonest practices, and allowed Ghosn to do what he wanted, because they saw that it gave them a convenient and cheap way of disposing of him if necessary. They knew that the Japanese courts would take their side, especially since they would be ratting out their criminal CEO, who was also a foreigner. Since the CEO would be leaving because of criminal charges, Nissan probably wouldn't need to pay him a severance package. Also, Nissan would avoid a potential humiliating takeover by Renault.

Key words - "defying Japanese business etiquette at every step." Although Ghosn was successful at turning around the company, he stepped on a lot of toes. For example, in every Japanese company if you are a permanent employee you cannot be fired except for extreme, egregious behavior (ex. - sexual harassment. Alternatively making a mistake and costing the company lots of money would not be a reason). Ghosn, however, not able to fire ineffective employees instead refused to pay bonuses. In all other companies these are automatic. (Not promoting bad employees is a common Japanese practice, or you are promoted in name only). Any foreigner working in a company that doesn't follow Japanese business practices quickly will find themselves out of a job or in a dead end career.

This video beats any movie plot. Although a fugitive, the feats he pulled are nothing short of impressive

Really interesting. After his arrest, we start , here in France, to discover his megalomaniac side. And french justice started to check on him.... finally. But for me the most interesting part was the public discovering Japanese justice: 99.9% of sentenced , unlimited time in jail without judgement, very poor human conditions there... On this point, there are few differences with China. And this story teach to many traveler to be VERY careful there

I appreciate your videos. Thank you for putting your heart into your video's. Keep up the great work.

Excellent video Dagogo! Thanks for this, I've been curious about this tale for some time. Can't wait for part 2!

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Beautiful piece of work, as always, Dagogo! You are what YouTube was meant to be. Oh, and Woodford's book (about 3-4 comments below) would make an amazing episode. Nudge nudge.

He seems like someone who was legitimately trying to get fair pay for his work, but the way in which he did it was inevitably going to end this way.

I think it was both; as you said, it was a brutal restructure at Nissan and Ghosn was the brains & face of that. It is literally straight out of Machiavelli, appoint someone to do the dirty work, then punish them for their methods , while keeping your own hands clean. Whereas Ghosn had an inflated ego & thought he could do no wrong.

Whatever he did or didn't do, Japanese justice system is one of the most demented in the world.

Thanks Cold fusion! Great as always, what a crazy series of events !

For a developed country, Japan has one of the worst judiciary system

This story is grossly exaggerating many issues. I live in Japan, and am familiar with many of the people mentioned. First, the properties purchased by Ghosn were bought in Nissan's name, belonged to, and still belong to Nissan, this story doesn't seem to want to share that fact. The $80 million in compensation the story claimed was cooked up between Ghosn and Kelly was actually approved by Nissan's board or directors, and this form of compensation after retirement is common practice in America and Japan. The money he paid to "a middle eastern businessman" was actually the head distributor of Nissan in the region, and the payment created a large positive return for Nissan. Ghosn had good reason to escape. First, he was innocent of the charges, nothing he had done was illegal. But in Japan you are assumed guilty until proven innocent, the burden rests upon you to prove your innocence, not the other way around. And Japan's justice system is unfair by the standards of other nations. Ghosn had already been in custody for a year, his court date for his first charge had been set for the following spring (nearly 3 years after his arrest), and there were rumors that it would be postponed. He would be tried separately for the other charges, meaning that even if he were eventually found innocent on all counts, Ghosn could have spend more than a decade in custody.

My view is that Goshn is both right, in his conclusion that Nissan planned to oust him, as well as guilty of channeling money into his own pockets (which he felt he deserved). He obviously has unique and valuable skills, yet his success also clouded his judgement.