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.
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.)
At the start of the thread, it's stated "Ghosn is really being persecuted for being a non-Japanese CEO of a Japanese company".
The SEC and French law enforcement are both unlikely to be motivated by this claimed bias.
There are plenty of settlements with "no one admits wrongdoing" where there was clear wrongdoing; it just saves everyone involved a costly legal battle, and some face.
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.