[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?)