[lmm]

> He had enriched himself to the tune of tens of millions of company dollars completely undisclosed to the firm.. he had multiple mansions, yachts, and “CEO Reserve” bank accounts that the BoD wasn’t aware of.

Really? Why did none of that come through in the court case then? I don't like the norm of giving CEOs valuable benefits instead of cash, but it's undeniably an accepted norm, especially in Japan.

He was convicted for the deferred pension compensation that he had not yet actually received, and for one year, despite the fact pattern being the same every year. The court blatantly made the minimum possible conviction because they knew none of the charges had merit but couldn't possibly acquit him.

[mikeyouse]

The SEC found that he had over $140M in undisclosed compensation, much of it hidden from Nissan’s management: https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/complaints/2019/comp246...

The French have multiple arrest warrants for him due to multiple overlapping fraud and embezzlement cases: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230704-second-french...

The BVI found that tens of millions of dollars stored there and the luxury yacht bought with Nissan’s funds and registered to a Shell company owned by Ghosn’s son, actually did belong to Nissan.. and on and on.

Why does anyone give that absolute creep the benefit of the doubt? It didn't come out in the court case because he fled the country before he was tried!

[lmm]

> The SEC found that he had over $140M in undisclosed compensation, much of it hidden from Nissan’s management: https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/complaints/2019/comp246...

That looks to be one side's claims, and even this one-sided telling acknowledges that he never received any of that money, and that the CFO and finance department signed off on what happened.

> It didn't come out in the court case because he fled the country before he was tried!

He fled the country after being detained and isolated (especially from his wife) for literally years without actually being charged or getting to trial. They were blatantly trying to break him without having to go to the trouble of actually proving a case. And the trial I'm talking about, that convicted him on exactly one count, was held in his absence after he escaped and had no reason to not throw everything at him.

If and when he's convicted in a fair trial under international norms where he gets a fair chance to defend himself, I'll condemn him for that. But until then I'm not going to take the allegations of the people who wanted him gone at face value.

[mikeyouse]

> Even this one-sided telling acknowledges that he never received any of that money, and that the CFO and finance department signed off on what happened.

It absolutely doesn't say that.. and it's not a credit to Carlos that many of his schemes to steal tens of millions of dollars in the future were discovered before he could do so.

> In addition to the more than $90 million in undisclosed and unpaid compensation, Ghosn and his subordinates knowingly or recklessly made, or caused to be made, false and misleading statements regarding more than $50 million of additional pension benefits for Ghosn. These included misleading Nissan’s CFO and other Nissan executives regarding the accounting for the additional pension amounts, and creating a false disclosure to support how Nissan accounted for them

[..]

> On or around February 23, 2015, at Ghosn’s direction, Nissan Employee 1 submitted an “Application for Budget Usage” signed by Ghosn, Nissan Employee 1, and Nissan’s CFO, to approve the use of the CEO reserve to book the LTIP awards. Nissan’s CFO was falsely told that the LTIP awards were a broad-based grant to numerous Nissan participants rather than that the vast majority was for Ghosn and included exchange rate protection on the inflated retirement allowance. Relying on this false information, Nissan’s CFO approved and signed off on the LTIP expense request, and the amounts were recorded over three fiscal years. Nissan’s CFO would not have approved booking the LTIP expense without additional disclosure if he had known the truth about its actual intended use.

The board approved Ghosn to create a subsidary to invest in new technologies and instead he spent over $20M on houses for himself in Rio and Beirut...

I literally can't believe people defend this level of corruption. He didn't spend "years" in jail awaiting trial, it was 3 months after the first arrest, another month after the second and then he fled the country within a year of his first arrest [the Japanese kept him in jail for those first 3 months because for some reason they thought he was a flight risk!)

[lmm]

> it's not a credit to Carlos that many of his schemes to steal tens of millions of dollars in the future were discovered before he could do so.

It's weird and misleading to describe money he never received and will never receive as "undisclosed compensation".

> Nissan’s CFO was falsely told that the LTIP awards were a broad-based grant to numerous Nissan participants rather than that the vast majority was for Ghosn and included exchange rate protection on the inflated retirement allowance. Relying on this false information, Nissan’s CFO approved and signed off on the LTIP expense request, and the amounts were recorded over three fiscal years. Nissan’s CFO would not have approved booking the LTIP expense without additional disclosure if he had known the truth about its actual intended use.

Right, that's the same part I was reading. The CFO is evidently claiming now that he was deceived back then, let's see what the evidence for that looks like.

From the fact that we have all these detailed figures and calculations, it looks to me very much like the CFO, board and finance department were in on the whole thing. This isn't him secretly taking money out of the vault, it's the company doing accounting tricks to pay him in a way that's more tax-efficient and then flipping it into saying he was stealing from them when they decide to get rid of him.

[mikeyouse]

> It's weird and misleading to describe money he never received and will never receive as "undisclosed compensation".

That's literally just basic accounting. If you are required to report all compensation someone earns and they get $100k salary, $100k bonus, and you put $800k into a retirement account with their name on it - you can't say they only made $200k last year. They only reason he will never receive this undisclosed compensation is because the plot and the blatant illegality was discovered.

And lol, of course his is using the pilfered funds to setup his son in Silicon Valley where he worked for Joe Lonsdale.

https://archive.is/ijY1o

[lmm]

> If you are required to report all compensation someone earns and they get $100k salary, $100k bonus, and you put $800k into a retirement account with their name on it - you can't say they only made $200k last year.

And yet the vast majority of large Japanese corporations do exactly that, and the Japanese court acquitted him on that exact fact pattern for all but one of the years they examined.