TOKYO — Automotive fugitive Carlos Ghosn says the recent management upheaval at Nissan that produced the “defenestration” of former COO Ashwani Gupta is proof that boardroom “cloak and dagger” is still rife at the Japanese automaker.
Ghosn also said his recent $1 billion lawsuit against Nissan and certain executives at the company is meant to keep those who worked against him from sleeping soundly at night.
“What I’m looking for is no revenge,” Ghosn said of the criminal complaint he filed in May against Nissan at a court in Lebanon, where the former Nissan-Renault boss remains holed up as an indicted defendant on Japan’s wanted list. “I’m trying to have part of my rights back. And I just want to make sure that all the criminals and plotters cannot sleep quietly in their beds.”
Speaking on Tuesday during an online press conference hosted by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, Ghosn bemoaned the current state of today’s alliance between Nissan and its French partner Renault, a partnership that he helped run for nearly two decades until his 2018 arrest.
He pointed to the long-delayed completion of a Nissan agreement to invest in Renault’s planned electric vehicle spin off unit as a sign of festering distrust and withered ambition.
“After my arrest, the alliance was shattered,” Ghosn said.
“The only thing you can do is to restart something less ambitious, much more restricted,” Ghosn said via video link from his home office in Beirut. “And now what they're trying to do with this latest agreement is trying to go for a mini alliance with a very reduced scope of cooperation.”
And June’s departure of Gupta, amid a swirl of reports about internal infighting at Nissan, was another sign of lingering dysfunction, the former CEO and chairman said.
Gupta gone
Gupta left in June after being taken off the company’s board of directors. His departure came amid reports of a power struggle with current CEO Makoto Uchida and speculation of disenchantment with what some insiders perceived as a hard-ball approach to talks with Renault.
Gupta left Nissan amid allegations of unspecified misconduct, and Nissan has said it has hired outside, independent parties to investigate and verify the facts of the matter.
“This soap opera of the defenestration of Gupta has been frankly laughable,” Ghosn said. “I understood that there was a new corporate governance, with new rules, with a lot of transparency. All of this was, frankly, a story for idiots. The cloak and dagger continues.”
Ghosn maintains that he was arrested on trumped up charges concocted by a group of Nissan nationalists bent on blocking further integration with Renault.
Relations between the two companies soured after his arrest and ousting. And the companies have been trying to broker a rebalancing of their longstanding cross shareholdings.
Since late last year, Nissan and Renault have been trying to finalize a deal that would rebalance Renault’s controlling 43 percent stake in Nissan and the Japanese company’s non-voting 15 percent stake in Renault. In early February, they reached a deal in which Renault would reduce its stake in Nissan to 15 percent, in exchange for Nissan taking up to 15 percent in it Ampere EV unit.
But months later, the partners still haven’t announced a finalized deal on the holdings.
Nissan spokesman Shiro Nagai said the Japanese company declined comment on Ghosn’s assessment. He added that although the company is aware of media reports about Ghosn’s $1 billion lawsuit against the carmaker, it also doesn’t comment on active legal proceedings.
‘Not a turkey’
Ghosn’s lawsuit against Nissan in Lebabon targets Nissan and multiple former and current executives at the company. According to media reports, the roster of defendants includes Hari Nada, the former head of the CEO office who took a plea bargain to testify against Ghosn, Motoo Nagai, a board member who is currently chair of the audit committee, and Hiroto Saikawa, the longtime Ghosn protégé who was CEO of Nissan at the time of Ghosn’s arrest.
Ghosn’s claim seeks lost compensation and punitive rewards. A timeline for proceedings in that case is unclear. It is uncertain how any ruling in Ghosn’s favor from a Lebanese judicial jurisdiction might be enforced against Nissan as a corporate entity or individuals outside the country.
Back in Japan, prosecutors accused Ghosn and former American director Greg Kelly of hiding some $80.5 million in postponed Ghosn compensation from 2010 to 2018.
Both men, arrested the same day in November 2018, deny wrongdoing.
In March 2022, Kelly was cleared by a Japanese criminal court in seven of the eight years Nissan alleged financial misconduct. Kelly was given a suspended sentence and allowed to return to the U.S., but only after being jailed in Japan and then grounded in the country on bail for more than three years while he fought the charges in court.
Ghosn, who was indicted on additional criminal breach of trust charges not filed against Kelly, remains pinned down in his ancestral homeland of Lebanon after fleeing Japan in a dramatic dark-of-night escape, hidden in a box, in December 2019.
Ghosn, who holds a Lebanese passport, has been holed up in the country since Japan issued an Interpol red notice for his arrest. Lebanon doesn't extradite its citizens.
Asked at the press conference whether he regretted jumping bail, Ghosn was emphatic that he could never get a fair trial in Japan and that bolting the country was his only option.
“I’m not an idiot. I’m not a turkey,” he said. “Did I lose moral ground? Maybe,” he said. “This was the best solution for me, and I don’t regret it.”