[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.

[ceejayoz]

You continue to miss the point.

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.

[fennecfoxen]

The SEC began its investigation in late January, after the arrest and months-long fishing expeditions by Japanese prosectors (and two or three different announcements about crimes they had found, the latter of which dismissed the earlier theories).

The Japanese prosecution is easily 100% political; any actual crimes they found are pure coincidence. As for myself, I am much more upset by a corrupt and politicized judiciary in charge of a major first-world nation than I am by dubious business deals, just one case of the many they will handle.

(And further note that Ghosn was while still in jail in Japan while he settled with the SEC, with very little access to his lawyers... and, of course, no trial date set, because who needs a "right to a speedy trial" anyway?)