[JohnJamesRambo]

Having just read his wikipedia, it seems this goes very much deeper than treating someone in an "un-Japanese" way.

>Nissan was paying all or some of the costs at some amount of US$18 million for residences used by Ghosn in Rio de Janeiro, Beirut, Paris and Amsterdam, and that Ghosn charged family vacation expenses to the company.

And the list goes on and on...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn#Arrest_in_Tokyo_a...

>Nissan compliance auditors began trying to track Zi-A activity in 2014 but were stymied at first by the chain of shell companies used in Zi-A investments.

>Nissan funds were used to purchase Ghosn's Paris apartment in 2005, and Zi-A funds were used to purchase his $5 million beachfront Rio apartment in 2012 and his Beirut mansion, which, with renovations, cost over $15 million.

>In addition, to avoid reporting the full amount of his compensation in Nissan financials, as required by Japanese law beginning in 2010, Ghosn had Kelly structure complicated deferred payment plans which went unreported under an aggressive interpretation of the disclosure rules which Nissan's outside auditors had not signed off on, and which totaled around $80 million at the time of his arrest eight years later.

He's just your typical CEO criminal and should be in a cell next to murderers and drug kingpins.

Nissan stock in 2018 - $21. Today - $11.67.

[ninjin]

Indeed, it is also perfectly possible for the Japanese legal system to have serious issues [1] and Ghosn to have far from clean hands.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Japan#Judicial...

[dynamite-ready]

Posting the share price at the end of your post is reasonable, sure. But to be fair to Ghosn, much of Nissan's success in the past 20 years can be attributed to him - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46321097

Doesn't excuse any alleged crimes, but I didn't think it was entirely fair to surmise his career at Nissan with a reference to today's share price. Despite all that's written about CEOs, salaries, and correlated efficacy...

[JohnJamesRambo]

I checked other automakers’ stock prices and didn’t see anything like this Nissan dip since 2018. It seems likely he is to blame for the poor performance. Yes he may have been responsible for some of the company’s success but that doesn’t allow him to skim 100s of millions of dollars from the top. He was more than adequately compensated already.

Also it is hard to say how much he was responsible for Nissan’s turnaround. In reading his wiki I kept seeing things that I knew took lots of hard work from people below him yet it is always attributed to the CEO.

[ceejayoz]

The "Investigations in other countries" bit is also a problem for the "un-Japanese" theory, too. France and the US SEC went after him, as well.

[fennecfoxen]

The business with the SEC was entirely reasonable — and he has settled with them. It would make a lot of sense to handle this dispute in the boardroom, first. It makes plenty of sense to handle this with the SEC or a similar regulatory agency.

It is much less defensible to invite the national news media to his arrest, lock the man up without access to his lawyers for months on end, and then go on a fishing expedition to find some reason to justify the arrest after the fact. Besides the routine abrogation of justice in Japan, of which this is only a minor instance, this practice takes a situation which might risk appearing corrupt and politically motivated, and doubles down on the politics and the appearance of corruption.

[ceejayoz]

The point is, he committed serious enough offenses to get a ten year ban from running a public company in the US for a decade.

The SEC is unlikely to have gone after him just because he didn't act sufficiently Japanese.

[fennecfoxen]

He most certainly was not banned from running a public company in the US for a decade because of his offenses. He agreed not to run any companies that reported to the SEC, and the SEC agreed to drop its case.

(And if you believe that settling a case without admitting guilt is the same as guilt, I would hate to see what you think of criminal plea bargains in the US, which are much more common, and many of which are far worse abrogations of justice.)

[ceejayoz]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-23/sec-accus...

> Ghosn was barred from serving as a director or officer of a public company for 10 years, while Kelly agreed to a five-year ban.

[fennecfoxen]

> Nissan, Ghosn and Kelly ... all resolved the cases without admitting or denying wrongdoing.

[tonyedgecombe]

Isn’t this fairly typical for Japanese corporations, that senior management might have their home paid for by the company?

There are smells coming from both sides of this dispute.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Isn’t this fairly typical for Japanese corporations, that senior management might have their home paid for by the company?

There are also the funds paid to companies affiliated with his wife and son. Both Nissan and Renault’s Boards found these surprising, which is ultimately why he lost the latter’s support.

There are smells on both sides. The simplest explanation is Ghosn is dirty and the Japanese criminal justice system is biased. The fact that the former is now an international fugitive somewhat simplifies his criminality in most jurisdictions.

[yborg]

The CEO to rank and file pay disparity in Japanese companies has traditionally been much lower than in Western corporations, and the compensation of non-Japanese executives (of which there have been very few) has rankled the Japanese in the past. Paying for a condo in Tokyo is one thing, beach houses in Rio is another, this would be outrageous by Japanese standards if true.

[Danieru]

No, not at all. Japan has some of the most egalitarian CEO pay in developed countries.

Ghosn exploited his position and muddied waters. He paid himself 3 CEO salaries and yet continuously claimed to be under paid.

To claim Nissan, an entity Ghosn controlled, was somehow equally as guilty is what-about-ism.

[fennecfoxen]

You seem to basically be saying that we should consider Ghosn to be guilty of crimes because he was an outsider whose attitude wasn't sufficiently Japanese. To me this seems to reinforce his position, rather than yours.

[Danieru]

I said nothing of the sort, please do not troll on hacker news.

[tonyedgecombe]

It certainly wasn't what-about-ism, rather that I suspect the prosecution is politically and/or commercially motivated.

[dclowd9901]

Right. He’s just mad the Japanese court system doesn’t throw anyone a bone. Even rich folk.

[meddlepal]

Any court system that assumes guilt is a bullshit one. The Japanese legal system seems to be designed to get people to admit guilt so the process ends quickly. That's a garbage-fire of a legal system.

[babarock]

"presumption of innocence until proven guilty" is a Human Right (article 11 of https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/)

[fennecfoxen]

It would be more fair to say "the Japanese court system presumes guilt and treats everyone like inhuman garbage, even rich folk."

There was a fun incident in the UN where an ambassador from Japan made a remark that Japan's justice system was modern and exemplary. Everyone in the room just laughed at him. (He got upset, and told everyone to shut up, and then got fired for his outburst.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYfHWsWJhtg

_Death Note_ is a documentary.

[coldtea]

>>Nissan was paying all or some of the costs at some amount of US$18 million for residences used by Ghosn in Rio de Janeiro, Beirut, Paris and Amsterdam, and that Ghosn charged family vacation expenses to the company.

>And the list goes on and on...

As if that specific item above is something special? Tons of execs do just the same, and nobody bats an eye.

Some people at Nissan/Japan wanted to get the "outsider"...

[qaq]

This vs WeWork founder taking out loans from We buying properties and leasing them back to WeWork.

[glofish]

For me the sentences such as:

Nissan was paying all or some of the costs at some amount of US$18 million for residences used by Ghosn in Rio de Janeiro, Beirut, Paris and Amsterdam, and Ghosn charged family vacation expenses to the company

sound like pure BS ... that the CEO of a company that sells 10 million cars per year charged a family vacation ... none of us are aware of what his contract states, what he was promised etc.

Jumping on the "criminal CEO" bandwagon is tiring stuff. MY hat off to Mr. Gosh, not only did he manage well three gigantic companies, he managed himself just as well, skipped the BS charges and got himself out of Japan. That's a genius manager right there.

[moralsupply]

And he did all of that in a non-violent way, which makes the whole case about prosecution and jail (with guilt implied, as customary in Japan) absurd.

[selimthegrim]

Think he’ll get another manga but this time about his escape?