I remember reading about him in Brazil while I was graduating. He is definitely born in Brazil, but I think he has another citizenship too. Wikipedia says
>is a Brazilian-born French businessman of Lebanese ancestry.
I wonder if the Japanese authorities didn’t just decide the case against him wasn’t strong enough (or that his lawyers were fighting it too hard) and they might jeopardize their legendary 99% conviction rates, and they decided to look the other way while he “escaped.”
Dunno why being downvoted for this. Makes perfect sense. I'm surprised the guy didn't flee earlier -- his bail money (~$15mn) would be a pittance. Pity his poor lieutenant left behind though. Nasty business.
You don’t need a valid passport to land in Beirut, at least that’s my lived experience.
I have dual citizenship, I was born in XX. Our Lebanese passports had expired, so my mother and I used our XX passports to fly into Beirut several years ago—I purchased a visa upon touching down, but boarder control insisted I return it, they recognized my last name [1]. Leaving two days later without being able to produce evidence of military service (I was 17 at the time) was a nightmare, and the XX government would not help seeing as how this was not their problem (the curse of a dual citizenship), but I got lucky (see [1]). Come to think of it, Lebanon was in such disarray at the time, it would have been nearly impossible to renounce my Lebanese citizenship—even today, I have no idea what the first step would be.
[1] I’m no Ghosn, but my grandfather had toyed with the idea of running for federal office in Lebanon at the time.
Ghosn is a Lebanese citizen (among French and Brazilian) and he chose to flee to Lebanon. In many countries, such as the US, you don't need a passport to return home. You don't need any documentation, in fact. The border agency will detain you and question you for days until you can sufficiently prove your citizenship, but they are legally obligated to let you back into the country. I don't know whether this is the case for Lebanon or not.
Commercial flights check your passport before you board, because there are regulations and they like to cover their own ass, but private charter flight don't have these checks if you pay enough.
The Lebanese border control said that someone that looked like Carlos came into the country with another name. So he had help from some people...
Either way: he's shortlisted to be the next Lebanese president, is my guess... I think that's his long term strategy to avoid his fraud trial. You can't really arrest or extradite a head of state for fraud.
> they might jeopardize their legendary 99% conviction rates
Isn't your implication that japan's court system is corrupt. So what would the strength of the case have to do with it? Wouldn't japan have convicted him regardless of evidence?
Or maybe their conviction rate isn't as "legendary" as you think.
Canada's is at 97%, we have a 93% rate in the US. There is more nuance and context to silly reddit posts about japan.
> and they decided to look the other way while he “escaped.”
My guess is that it was negotiations between japanese politicians/nissan execs and french politicians/renault execs. My guess is that there were some concessions in exchange for letting ghosn flee. What they are, we'll never know. And what ghosn really did to get nissan upset, we'll never know.
I would love to see a real deep dive on what happened with Ghosn. All I've heard about is snippets of Japan being unhappy that the alliance looked likely to end up with Nissan being a susbidiary of Renault rather than vice versa, then there's all these accusations of corruption - which probably aren't completely unfoundeed, but could easily just be a pretext. It feels like someone could write a full "Bad Blood" style piece about all the twists and turns and it'd be really interesting.
> It feels like someone could write a full "Bad Blood" style piece about all the twists and turns and it'd be really interesting.
You're not wrong.
He was hailed as the savior of Nissan and there were a manga of him about it IIRC. He saved Nissan in the 90s and turned that company around. I've stopped follow car news after 2010s and have stopped fawning over Nissan. But the fall of him is really weird I've no clue what's going on but very crazy 180 turn of event of recent years.
The Japanese conviction rate is the highest in the world, higher than dictatorships that coerce confessions through beatings. No one should reasonably expect a fair trial in Japan.
26 comments
[ 18.1 ms ] story [ 734 ms ] thread>is a Brazilian-born French businessman of Lebanese ancestry.
And
>Nationality French–Lebanese–Brazilian
I have dual citizenship, I was born in XX. Our Lebanese passports had expired, so my mother and I used our XX passports to fly into Beirut several years ago—I purchased a visa upon touching down, but boarder control insisted I return it, they recognized my last name [1]. Leaving two days later without being able to produce evidence of military service (I was 17 at the time) was a nightmare, and the XX government would not help seeing as how this was not their problem (the curse of a dual citizenship), but I got lucky (see [1]). Come to think of it, Lebanon was in such disarray at the time, it would have been nearly impossible to renounce my Lebanese citizenship—even today, I have no idea what the first step would be.
[1] I’m no Ghosn, but my grandfather had toyed with the idea of running for federal office in Lebanon at the time.
> Hironaka added that Ghosn's attorneys hold his passports, and that the former auto executive "could not possibly use them."
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/30/business/carlos-ghosn-leb...
Commercial flights check your passport before you board, because there are regulations and they like to cover their own ass, but private charter flight don't have these checks if you pay enough.
Either way: he's shortlisted to be the next Lebanese president, is my guess... I think that's his long term strategy to avoid his fraud trial. You can't really arrest or extradite a head of state for fraud.
Exit from Japan is mystery. Private chartered flight, without stopovers, I’d guess :-)
There’ll be movie on this at some time in future.
Isn't your implication that japan's court system is corrupt. So what would the strength of the case have to do with it? Wouldn't japan have convicted him regardless of evidence?
Or maybe their conviction rate isn't as "legendary" as you think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate
Canada's is at 97%, we have a 93% rate in the US. There is more nuance and context to silly reddit posts about japan.
> and they decided to look the other way while he “escaped.”
My guess is that it was negotiations between japanese politicians/nissan execs and french politicians/renault execs. My guess is that there were some concessions in exchange for letting ghosn flee. What they are, we'll never know. And what ghosn really did to get nissan upset, we'll never know.
The Japanese justice system is messed up ... long detention periods to induce confessions and then not allowed to see your family is just so cruel.
So I take their conviction rate of 99% with a rather large bag of salt.
You're not wrong.
He was hailed as the savior of Nissan and there were a manga of him about it IIRC. He saved Nissan in the 90s and turned that company around. I've stopped follow car news after 2010s and have stopped fawning over Nissan. But the fall of him is really weird I've no clue what's going on but very crazy 180 turn of event of recent years.