Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sixQuarks 2357 days ago
I’m somewhat involved in the automotive industry, and a lot of insiders consider what happened to Ghosn as being a coup by Japanese executives who detested him being an outsider. If this is the case, they really did him dirty and I support him fleeing the country.
2 comments

The whole 'gaijin' side-story is hard to ignore, given all that's written in the western press about Japan, and it's attitude towards migrants. But there's surely no smoke without fire in a case like this, because it should be fairly easy to prove some degree of innocence in crimes of this nature.

It has been interesting to gain a little insight into how pernicious the Japanese judiciary can be though.

The story of the artist Megumi Igarashi is especially funny (yet also disturbingly sexist)...

Ghosn though, is far from funny. But fleeing the country is a pretty sketchy response to a criminal charge.

>But fleeing the country is a pretty sketchy response to a criminal charge.

He was facing a 20 year prison sentence in a country with a 99.7% conviction rate. The trial was to take place later this year. He's 65 years old. I have no idea whether he's guilty of the charges but the reality of the situation he faced was that his only two choices were flee now or likely spend the rest of his life in prison.

Japanese conviction rates exceed 99%, he's 65 years old and facing 20 years. It's not really that surprising he fled, I have a hard time believing that any of us in a similar circumstance and with similar means wouldn't do the same. He was faced with an A | B choice. A: Stay and die in prison. B: Flee and maybe not get caught for a hot minute, eventually get caught, die in prison.
yeah, right, poor rich man. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn#Arrest_in_Tokyo_a...

> In September, in one of the first legal accords of the saga, Ghosn settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over claims of failing to disclose more than $140 million in pay to him from Nissan. He was fined $1 million while Nissan was fined $15 million and Greg Kelly $100,000. He is barred from serving as a director or officer of a public company for ten years and Kelly for five years

Even in the US he was caught.

He used company funds for himself. It's pretty clear. If an average man would have done that he would have been paying it already, but he is a rich man so he could escape.