Carlos Ghosn, a name once lauded amongst the world's captains of industry.
The Brazilian born businessman quickly rose through the ranks of the automobile industry
to become the CEO of several global companies, to include Michelin's North American branch,
Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi Motors.
It was however his time spent as the head of Nissan that saw Ghosn rise to global fame,
when he took the company from bankruptcy to financial success once more.
In time he would chair the powerful Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance and bring the group to a 10% global
market share.
Then suddenly, Ghosn's world turned upside down.
As he touched down in a private plane to Tokyo International Airport late in the afternoon
of November 19th, 2018, Ghosn was met by Tokyo District prosecutors, who immediately took
him into custody.
Shortly after, his top aide, Greg Kelly, was also arrested when arriving back home to Japan
after a trip in the US.
Hours later, Nissan's chief executive Hiroto Saikawa called a press conference and revealed
that Ghosn had been dismissed from Nissan's board of directors, and that he would be subsequently
stripped of all executive rights.
The financial world was shocked, what in the world could have happened to have a man known
as 'Mr. Fix It' for his miraculous turnarounds of troubled companies, fall so far and so
fast from grace?
The answer would come soon enough, and for those who understood Japanese business culture,
they wouldn't be very surprising.
Ghosn had been the target of an internal Nissan investigation, in cooperation with Japanese
police, when suspicions arose over his misuse of company funds.
As the investigation dragged on, a laundry list of financial misdeeds was discovered,
all centered around the use of Nissan funds for Ghosn's personal gain.
To avoid public embarrassment in the shame-sensitive nation of Japan, Nissan worked to limit the
details of that investigation with the public, but what came to light was a deep culture
of corruption by Ghosn and his top aide, who both worked to hide their misuse of company
funds from other top executives.
Ghosn allegedly manipulated Nissan's record keeping to hide the fact that he was using
the company to pay some or all of the costs of his $18 million in residences in Rio de
Janeiro, Beirut, Paris, and Amsterdam.
He also routinely charged all family vacation expenses directly to the company, and given
his expensive tastes, this wasn't a budget trip to the local water park.
We're talking millions in gallivanting around the world, all on the company dime.
Ghosn had talked Nissan into setting up a shell company- Zi-A Capital- to be used to
make venture investments around the end of 2010, and this company became his own personal
piggy bank.
To hide his activities, Ghosn created an elaborate chain of shell companies that handled the
money Zi-A Capital was investing in various venture enterprises.
The long chain of shell companies stymied the efforts of Nissan auditors to track Zi-A's
activities, and hid Ghosn's spending spree from the company.
In total somewhere around $15-20 million in property alone was purchased by Ghosn on the
company dime.
Buying property and taking off for luxury vacations around the world wasn't enough for
Ghosn though, and that's because one specific aspect of Japanese CEO culture particularly
chafed the rich Brazilian businessman.
In Japanese culture, CEOs are not the sociopathic, greedy, aggressive, intimidating figures that
they typically are in the rest of the world- or at least they're not supposed to be.
Japanese CEO culture strives for a sense of humility and modesty, and thus Japanese CEOs
are not paid nearly as lavishly as those from other nations.
For Ghosn, this was unacceptable.
To hell with humility, Ghosn needed to get paid.
And get paid he did.
With the aid of his confidant Greg Kelly, Ghosn created a series of very complicated
deferred payment plans which were hidden from financial reports and amounted to Ghosn giving
himself a bonus of around $80 million dollars.
For those keeping track, this brought Ghosn's additional compensation to about $100 million,
though the full figure is still a mystery as Nissan fights very hard to keep that embarrassing
secret from leaking out.
As if that wasn't enough, Ghosn then shifted the tab for a personal investment loss of
$16.6 million directly to the company, because when you're a greedy scam artist apparently
you can't help yourself.
But wait, you might say, wasn't Ghosn responsible for turning around struggling automakers and
leading one of the largest companies in the world?
Maybe he deserved more than the modest salary that Japanese CEO culture afforded him.
A man should be rewarded for his hard work after all?
Well, you'd be right in saying that a man should be rewarded for their talent and hard
work, which is why Ghosn was at the time of his initial arrest in 2018 earning almost
$17 million a year as one of the world's top paid auto executives.
Maybe Ghosn was right in stealing around $100 million from Nissan, a man can barely make
ends meet at $17 million a year.
Ghosn was held under arrest for several days and was about to be released on bail when
news of an additional $8 million he had stolen through yet another shell company surfaced.
He was once more put back in jail pending a bail hearing, an act that he protested.
His wife also wrote a letter to Human Rights Watch protesting his treatment, because everyone
knows that a rich person sitting in jail constitutes a grave violation of human rights.
Ghosn was worth tens of millions of dollars and yet forced to sit in jail for having stolen
over $100 million, rubbing shoulders with common criminals- this was an Avengers-level
human rights threat.
Despite Ghosn's wife's passionate plea to the world community that Ghosn's human rights
were being violated by being forced to sit in jail for his crime, the Japanese legal
system said “bye girl” and denied a bail hearing until early March.
Ghosn was forced to sit in jail for almost a month in total over two separate arrests
before being allowed bail- remember that next time you hear of someone going to jail for
years over a drug possession charge.
Ghosn's arrest prompted other companies he had worked with to take a second look at their
own finances, because maybe Mr. Fix It wasn't just fixing their companies but his pocket
on their dime as well.
An investigation by Renault revealed 11 million in euro of questionable expenses by Ghosn,
and the French government opened a separate investigation into Ghosn.
Distraught over the possibility of actually having her husband be held accountable for
the theft of 100 million- and counting- dollars, Ghosn's wife made a passionate plea to French
president Emmanuel Macron to intercede on their behalf during a meeting with Japan's
Shinzo Abe.
Macron replied with a simple, “girl BYE” and declined.
Ghosn knew his goose was cooked, he would be facing the possibility of prison for his
theft- a realization that sent shock waves amongst the world's elite and rich.
He had to do something, and do it fast because the noose was closing in on him.
Any day now he could be carted off to prison from his house arrest in his luxurious home.
But that wouldn't happen, because Ghosn had come up with a plan.
Well, when we say 'plan', we actually mean more that he came up with a series of Scooby-Doo
like events that only an insanely rich person could possibly pull off.
Ghosn's escape would turn out to be less of a masterminded Oceans-11 escape plot, and
more a series of shenanigans financed by a whole lot of dough.
First, Ghosn decided to throw himself a party and hired musicians to come play at his home.
Watched by police authorities 24/7, Ghosn wasn't allowed to leave his home for any reason,
and had been forced to surrender all of his passports- well all except for the second
copy of his passport that he was by law forced to have on his person, because in Japan all
foreigners must have legal identification at all times.
This would prove to be a bit of an oversight on Japan's part, who seriously underestimated
how badly Ghosn didn't want to pay for his crimes and the Looney-Tunes-like measures
he would take to ensure that.
After the musicians finished playing, Ghosn excused himself to a room in his house where
the musicians had been storing their gear.
There he climbed into a large musical instrument case and had his accomplices seal him inside
with breathing hole for air.
Then Ghosn was simply wheeled out of his house, loaded into the back of a van, and driven
away- all directly under the noses of the watching police officers who didn't realize
they were in a cartoon sketch and should have been looking inside instrument cases for a
would-be fugitive.
Ghosn then was driven inside his instrument case to a remote airport in a small town and
loaded onto a private airplane.
The exact details of Ghosn's escape are unclear though, and some sources state that Ghosn
may have sneaked out of his home and met two men at a hotel.
Then the men and Ghosn took a bullet train to Osaka and checked in at a hotel near Kansai
International Airport.
A few hours later, Ghosn was shoved into a large container and wheeled to the airport,
where the box he was in couldn't fit into the X-ray machine and thus it was never checked.
Seeing as Ghosn's box was headed for an international flight on a private jet, airport security
probably didn't bother opening the box- way to go Japan airport security.
From there all that is known is that Ghosn flew on that private jet to Istanbul, and
then left on a second private jet to Beirut.
Once Ghosn was in Lebanon, Japan immediately requested Interpol issue a red notice for
his arrest, though since no extradition treaty exists between Japan and Lebanon, arrest is
extremely unlikely unless Ghosn leaves the country.
For his part, Ghosn made a public plea claiming he was a political asylum seeker, as he was
being unfairly targeted by Japan's cruel justice system for the simple crime of stealing a
hundred million dollars.
Ghosn claimed he fled injustice and political persecution, which only a really rich person
who stole a tenth of a billion dollars would have the balls to do.
Lebanon has instituted a travel ban on Ghosn, though to date there seems to be no consequences
for the hundred-million-and-counting in theft that Ghosn carried out over the last decade.
Because, you know- rich people.
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