Carlos Ghosn Attacks Japan and Nissan in Defense of His Escape

In recent days, officials in France have hardened their stance on Mr. Ghosn, calling him a “defendant like any other” and saying he should face justice in a court of law.

He sounded like he was in a boardroom.

Mr. Ghosn began his speech as if he were giving a corporate presentation, promising a point-by-point defense and projecting documents onto a screen. It looked as if he were set to draw on his background as a detail-oriented chief executive to sell another product: himself.

He focused on detailing his legal defense, outlining the minutiae of the case against him and discussing specific emails and statements to prosecutors, complete with a presentation of documents to support his argument. The documents were full of highlighted bullet points and red outlines. But there was a problem: The text was too small for anyone in the room to read.

He noted that both of his companies had fared worse without him. “By the way, the market cap decrease of Nissan is more than $10 billion,” he said. “By the way, Renault is not better. … The market cap of Renault went down by more than $5 billion.”

“As a shareholder of Nissan, I say who is protecting me?” he said.

At times he sounded as if he were addressing a corporate board, not a global television audience. His soliloquy on corporate finance got deep into the weeds of how Nissan accounted for compensation and corporate expenses.

Nissan ‘colluded’ with prosecutors, he said.

Mr. Ghosn pushed his theory that his arrest was the work of Nissan executives, saying he thought his arrest was motivated by the fact that Nissan’s performance had begun to decline.

“The collusion between Nissan and the prosecutor is everywhere,” he said.

And, he said, the charge of underreporting income isn’t one that should have landed him in jail.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/business/carlos-ghosn-beirut.html?emc=rss&partner=rss