Family Affair: U.S. Says Ghosn's Son Chipped in for Pop's Extraction

by Steph Willems

July 24th, 2020 11:47 AM

family affair u s says ghosns son chipped in for pops extraction

As the saying goes, the family that orchestrates the clandestine escape of an accused auto executive together, stays together. It seems that, on both sides of the operation to spirit arrested auto titan Carlos Ghosn out of Japan, were father-and-son teams.

In the U.S., arrangements for aircraft rentals and musical instrument boxes were handled by a former U.S. Army Special Forces member and his son, with funding provided by Ghosn himself, and about half a million dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency offered up by Ghosn’s son, U.S. prosecutors claim.

Per Reuters, federal prosecutors said in a court filing this week that Anthony Ghosn made $500,000 in cryptocurrency payments to Peter Taylor, son of military veteran and private security firm founder Michael Taylor.

The Taylors, wanted by Japan and arrested in Massachusetts earlier this year, are seeking bail, but the feds finger both as extreme flight risks. With Ghosn now safely ensconced in Lebanon, the orchestraters of his escape seem more likely to be extradited than the former executive himself. Lebanon doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Japan.

In seeking to squash the Taylor’s bail gambit, prosecutors laid out the financial transactions between them and the Ghosns. Carlos himself wired the father-son duo more than $862,000 in October of 2019, two months before his daring escape. At the time, he was under house arrest in Tokyo, awaiting trial on financial charges Ghosn claims were cooked up by Japanese officials and vindictive Nissan brass.

Shortly after Christmas 2019, Ghosn left his residence and traveled to a bullet train station, hopping on a train bound for another city that just happened to hold an international airport. There, he met men at a hotel and was subsequently hidden in an oversized instrument case and smuggled onto a waiting private jet chartered out of Turkey. Carrying a spare French passport, he switched planes in Istanbul before arriving in Beirut, his childhood home.

While the Taylors claim there exists no law on Japanese books that covers what they’ve been accused of, the U.S. still doesn’t want to grant bail. The pair “now have access to Ghosn’s vast resources with which to flee,” prosecutors stated.

[Image: Nissan]

#CarlosGhosn #CrimeAndPunishment #Ghosn #LawAndOrder #Nissan

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Sceptic on Jul 25, 2020

Taylors did break the law by aiding and abetting. But then the US court has to decide if extradition is warranted. Was Ghosn fairly treated by the Japs? Or was he a political prisoner? After all no extradition should happen to a country with failing legal system. Is Japan fair?

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-Nate on Jul 26, 2020

This whole affair sounds like a bad soap opera . -Nate

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- Lorenzo on Jul 26, 2020
  
  I look forward to the mega-star hit movie, with George Clooney as Ghosn, and Brad Pitt as his son. Adam Driver will play Peter Taylor, with Scarlett Johansson as Mrs. Ghosn. There's no need to wait for resolution, the escape is the climax.
  
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- Carmaker1 on Aug 08, 2020
  
  @Lorenzo 56 year old Brad Pitt? Yeah...no. As a former shareholder, I personally recall that Anthony Ghosn is a full 3 decades younger at 26, in being same age as a sibling. CG is 66, but started his family at 32. Pitt can't even pass for a Silicon Valley millennial TFK. It's not 1998 anymore. A dude born in '63 isn't anywhere near 25.
  
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