Arab News

Carla Chahrour, Dubai

Former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn told Japanese Entrepreneur Takafumi Horie, who was sentenced to two and a half years in jail after a conviction on violating securities laws, that the Japanese justice system, with its high conviction rate, offered him no place to get a fair trial.

“You cannot win 99.4 percent of the time, there is something wrong with the rules if that is happening, and the government’s justification of this is very worrying because it means that the system is not looking at these situations realistically,” Ghosn said.

In an interview which took place in Beirut, Lebanon, on Tuesday, Ghosn reiterated that he believes the charges against him were part of a conspiracy by Nissan to prevent him from fully merging Nissan with French automaker Renault. Emphasizing that the entire process was a set-up by Nissan Executives, who collaborated with Japanese prosecutors to get him arrested.

The ex-auto executive said that he was arrested for “underreporting a compensation that was not fixed, not decided, and not paid.”

After briefly explaining his arrests and detainments, Ghosn elaborated on the disadvantages he faced as he prepared for trial, and while he was in the courtroom.

“The thing that I was most disappointed about when dealing with the system was the weakness of the prosecutor in front of the judge,” Ghosn said.

“In any country you go, you have the defense, the prosecutor, and the judge, who is the boss. Not in Japan. Based on what I have witnessed from all the judges I have seen, the boss in Japan is the prosecutor, who everyone is afraid of, including the judge,” Ghosn added. 

Ghosn then discussed Japan’s 99 percent conviction rate, and explained how in other countries, one is presumed innocent until proven guilty, but in Japan, the defendant is immediately presumed guilty. 

He continued to criticize Japan’s justice system by citing a statement by Japan’s Minister of Justice that requested Ghosn to return to Japan in order to  prove his “innocence”, which confirmed his claim that under the Japanese justice system, he is guilty until proven innocent.

In Japan, Ghosn emphasized, the “hostage justice” system he was under, presented through his prolonged detention periods, were an affront to international standards, and knowing that the indiction was tilted in favor of the prosecutors, whom he believed were collaborating with Nissan, he had “zero chance” of getting a fair trial.

“We are going to discover the reality of what happened , which was a malicious plot prepared by people that has had disastrous consequences on Nissan, Renault and the overall reputation of Japan,” Ghosn said.