Ghosn Finally Allowed to Speak With Wife

by Matt Posky

November 22nd, 2019 2:02 PM

ghosn finally allowed to speak with wife

Carlos Ghosn, former head of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, has been allowed to see his wife Carole for the first time in seven months. Fortunately for Ghosn, the pair actually wanted to speak and had been complaining about this throughout their time apart. Indicted on various charges we’ve covered to death, Japanese courts decided last April that it was too big of a risk to let the couple interact. The fear was that the duo would somehow conspire or possibly tamper with evidence.

The suspension of their separation appears to be limited event, however. The Tokyo District Court only agreed to allow a single meeting after Ghosn’s legal council began pushing for softer bail conditions over the summer.

According to Automotive News, the couple was allowed to speak while being supervised by a lawyer and were explicitly forbade from discussing the legal case. Mrs. Ghosn last saw her spouse after he was (re)released in April, before being taken into back into custody. Since then, they’ve not been allowed to have any contact.

During their time apart, Carole has openly accused the Japanese government of having a “guilty until proven innocent” mentality, claiming its treatment of her husband is unacceptable — even comparing it to a hostage situation. One of her biggest criticisms is the amount of time it has taken the prosecution to build its case. She claims he was arrested without sufficient evidence and fears he’s being held until they find some. The solution, according to her, is to have him extradited to France in order to stand trial. She’s sought political support in Europe to make it happen.

“This court decision is valid only for this one time, and we are not sure if the court will grant another chance, going forward,” Ghosn’s lawyers said. “But we will continue to request that the court ease bail conditions to allow Ghosn to communicate or meet his wife.”

Carlos is currently facing four indictments following his initial November 2018 arrest in Japan. The first two are charges of failing to disclose more than $80 million in deferred compensation. The rest are breach of trust charges accusing Ghosn of intentionally diverting company money away from Nissan for personal gain.

He denies the charges against him, suggesting he was on the receiving end of an industrial coup to unseat him and his supporters. Guilty or innocent, that coup sort of came to pass with Nissan and Renault doing their utmost to remove anyone with ties to the former business leader. Now Ghosn just wants a firm trial date and access to the evidence the prosecution plans to use against him so he can build his own case. His legal team has faulted the prosecution with tampering with evidence by giving it back to Nissan. They’re also worried the company may dispose of potentially exonerating evidence.

“Tokyo prosecutors have repeatedly and systematically denied Mr. Ghosn fundamental rights of due process and turned the presumption of innocence on its head,” Ghosn’s legal team said in a statement to mark the one year anniversary of his arrest.

[Image: Nissan]

#CarlosGhosn #CaroleGhosn #Ghosn #HotLegalAction #LawAndOrder #Nissan #Renault #Renault-Nissan-MitsubishiAlliance

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11 of 22 comments

Inside Looking Out on Nov 22, 2019

"has been allowed to see his wife Carole for the first time in seven months" What a wonderful world we live in! With all my respect Japan still behaves as a third world country. Still hundred years or so behind of developed European and NA countries.

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- JimZ on Nov 23, 2019
  
  For all of their reputation as a technological powerhouse (in the 80s, they're fading fast) they can be surprisingly backwards. The first time I went to Japan in 2005, when I bought a train ticket the cashier calculated my change using a soroban. i.e. an abacus. yes, the thing you slide beads around on.
  
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- Inside Looking Out on Nov 23, 2019
  
  @JimZ It is (abacus) is pretty effective for these kind of tasks: does not consume energy, easy to produce, can be made without using plastics, no ecologically dubious manufacturing and disposal (of semiconductor chips, LCDs, batteries and etc).
  
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- Inside Looking Out on Nov 23, 2019
  
  @JimZ When I was last time in Japan in 2016 many (engineers and not only) still used flip phones with iMode I assume - the only Japanese SW innovation that is obsolete over ten years already.
  
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AnalogMan on Nov 23, 2019

I used to travel to Japan quite often on business. The unspoken but harsh reality is, the Japanese as a people see themselves as being fundamentally superior to all other races. Non-Japanese are regarded as significantly inferior, as little better than animals, and thus not deserving of the same rights or respect as Japanese people. That is how they justify doing things that to us seem unspeakably barbaric as ravenchris shockingly described, or the inhumane treatment of Ghosn. There's a form of 'sashimi' called odori in which the fish are eaten while still alive. I would bet that they would see what ravenchris described as being closer to odori than the rest of us would like to think. If you're a 'gaijin', a non-Japanese, you can expect merciless, ruthless treatment from their legal system. The Japanese will no doubt concoct some rationale on which to convict him. As a gaijin, he most certainly will not get anything remotely resembling a 'fair trial' or 'due process' by US or European standards - look at how he's been treated so far. For alleged accounting irregularities, he's being treated more harshly than a violent mass murderer would be in the US or Europe. Their companies build damn fine cars, and I've been buying them almost exclusively for the past 30 years. But the moral is, you really, really, really don't want to tangle with the Japanese legal system if you're a non-Japanese person. You will not get a fair shake, you WILL lose, and you will pay a very painful price.

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- 28-Cars-Later on Nov 23, 2019
  
  I have heard this sort of thing over the years but never had it confirmed. Its funny that this is never discussed, isn't it?
  
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- JimZ on Nov 23, 2019
  
  @28-Cars-Later just look at what Imperial Japan did prior to WWII. There's a reason China and Korea are not terribly fond of them.
  
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- 28-Cars-Later on Nov 23, 2019
  
  @JimZ Such things are explained in documentaries I have seen about the Japanese Empire prior to WWII, but public consciousness of this history is shallow at best.
  
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- Inside Looking Out on Nov 23, 2019
  
  I wonder what ACLU doing about it?
  
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- Inside Looking Out on Nov 23, 2019
  
  @JimZ As far as I know unlike Germans they never apologized for that. I do not know how they are planning to make allies in region. Americans at least had an opportunity to pay back and then take them under control.
  
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- SPPPP on Nov 27, 2019
  
  @Inside Looking Out Japanese politicians have apologized various times for the damage of the war. Maybe not for each specific class of atrocity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan As we all know, apologies after the fact can't erase the memory of the harm.
  
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