[gottorf]

> If other people embezzle as well, send them to prison, but there’s no universe in which Ghosn is clean.

Well, selective justice is a form of injustice. I only have superficial knowledge of the Ghosn saga, but if what the GP alleges is true, then it's not fair to Ghosn that he's prosecuted for something that others get a pass. Of course, I take your point that it's entirely possible to be a bigcorp CEO without fraud and self-dealing.

To scale it down, lots of people drive over the speed limit, which is against the law; but only some people get pulled over and ticketed for it. Many people also observe the speed limit. In the Ghosn analogy, suppose that Japanese drivers got a pass, but foreigners didn't.

Should everyone get pulled over the instant they exceed the speed limit? Do we want to live in such a world? Is it just a matter of scale, the difference between driving a car too fast vs. stealing millions of dollars from your employer?

[rtpg]

There are plenty of criciticisms about the means by which he was prosecuted but "others get a pass but he doesn't" is not a great way of thinking about this.

If the government decides to get more serious about this stuff, there will be firsts! There will be people who "got away with it"! It's never applied perfectly evenly. You gotta start somewhere.

Of course the way he was thrown around, when they could have impounded a bunch of his assets and just restricted his movements... the police have their ways of doing things and restriction of speech in particular to avoid coverups is probably a huge chunk of their motivations.

Ghosn isn't the first executive in Japan to ever be arrested. But maybe the police felt the stakes were too high. During the Livedoor scandal, Horie had to post a 300 million yen bond for his temporary freedom, and that was for an "internet company". How much would Ghosn's bond need to be in comparison? Not saying that this is the right way to go about things, but it feels at least consistent.

[lmm]

> If the government decides to get more serious about this stuff, there will be firsts! There will be people who "got away with it"! It's never applied perfectly evenly. You gotta start somewhere.

Sure. But if that "somewhere" just happens to be the literal 1 foreigner among literally hundreds of CEOs doing the same thing, there will naturally be raised eyebrows.

[mikeyouse]

> Should everyone get pulled over the instant they exceed the speed limit?

In places with speed cameras, that is exactly what happens. There’s no better way to find an unjust law than to enforce it evenly.

And scale is very important! In your analogy, many CEOs are speeding, some driving 5mph over, some 10mph, but Carlos was tripling the speed limit and then sawed through the bars of the courthouse before he saw trial. It’s insane to me that people are defending it. If you don’t want to be selectively prosecuted for massively embezzling company funds - don’t embezzle company funds..

He had secretly bought himself a 140ft yacht with stolen company funds!

https://img.20mn.fr/FofgQudYQhKtDOGwCHCuRyk/1444x920_un-cust...

[ty6853]

I don't care if he raped 12 nuns, he was unable to get a fair trial so his escape was just. Japan's justice system is a farcical.

[mikeyouse]

Protip - you should care if he raped 12 nuns! Japan's justice system, while certainly has issues is universally considered to be one of the worlds' fairest. Their high conviction rate is solely due to taking so few cases to judgement as most plead out.

[smcin]

Not so - Japan's [criminal] justice system is absolutely not "universally considered to be one of the worlds' fairest". Cite any authoritative source for claiming that. Most sources I found cite the Nordic countries or other W European countries.

(A high conviction rate at trial in Japan is merely due to not having a right-to-silence, imprisonment till trial, prosecutors discretionarily dropping some cases.)

[mikeyouse]

Japan is 14th here (above UK, Belgium, France, Spain and the US): https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/global/202...

Most of the stereotypes of the Japanese justice system are outdated, and it's pretty funny to hear one of the wealthiest people in the world claim he wouldn't get a fair trial there while he was walking free with unrestricted access to his lawyers after numerous arrests for serious financial crimes.

[smcin]

"universally considered to be one of the worlds' fairest" is not accurate, and "good by Asian standards, but not as good as the North European average" is more like it.

It is not stereotype but simple fact to state that Ghosn was held for questioning for a ridiculously long time by Western standards: 129 days over two periods in the Tokyo Detention House, of which 53 before indictment. Eight hours a day questioning, with no defense lawyer allowed to be present. You might somehow incriminate yourself if that was done to you too.

Ghosn was absolutely a special case: it was extremely plausible that he wouldn't get a fair trial there, as he was the highest-profile (non-Asian) foreigner in Japanese industry, with saturation international media coverage, and moreover there was major protectionism within the two car companies against operationally merging with Renault and actually having plant closings and major layoffs in one of Japan's most sacred industries, which also reportedly incurred high-level opposition from government. (This is not commenting on the specifics of Ghosn's financial case.)

And again, the fact that few high-profile white-collar cases go to trial but end in a plea (which you say is a virtue of the Japanese system) makes it hard to predict what might have happened, both evidence admissibility, verdict and sentence. Certainly unlikely he would have gotten a suspended sentence, if convicted.

UPDATE: Japan’s prosecutor reportedly repeatedly broke the law by leaking details of the case against Ghosn. Which pretty much corroborates both "wouldn't have gotten a fair trial" and "high-level political opposition".

UPDATE 2: RP was one of a handful of Nissan insiders who knew about the planned arrests beforehand: "I was called into Hari Nada's office…and told there was going to be a dramatic arrest. Arranged for maximum publicity... When you lie to someone, to get them back into a particular jurisdiction, so that you can have them arrested in a very public manner, that says a lot about what's going on." [0]

[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58070929